■ Single-use bags to be phased out in 2 years across California
Starting July 1, 2015, grocery and pharmacy shoppers won’t get their merchandise handed to them in single-use plastic bags. By 2016, the ban will apply to convenience and liquor stores, too.Gov. Jerry Brown has signed Senate Bill 270 into law, a move that pleased state Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Pacoima, who wrote the bill. The governor received the bill in early September after a legislative compromise reduced some lawmakers’ objections.
The bill had received support from those who voted against similar legislation in 2010, Padilla noted, and “I applaud Governor Brown for signing SB 270 into law,” he said. “He continues to lead our state forward with a commitment to sustainability.
“A throw-away society is not sustainable. This new law will greatly reduce the flow of billions of single-use plastic bags that litter our communities and harm our environment each year. Moving from single-use plastic bags to reusable bags is common sense. Governor Brown’s signature reflects our commitment to protect the environment and reduce government costs.”
In Benicia, Constance Beutel, chairperson of the Community Sustainability Commission, expressed delight at the bill becoming law.
“I am very pleased that this long-overdue ban has been signed into law!” said Beutel, who writes a regular column for The Herald.
“The environmental and public damage, along with the devastation plastic bags have caused among life in our waterways and oceans, has been unacceptable.”
She noted that elsewhere, entire countries have beaten California to the punch.
“Even India as a nation has banned plastic bags!” she said.
Mumbai, India’s council eliminated plastic bags in 2001, and according to a 2010 report by Beutel to her commission, the nation of Bangladesh banned the bags in 2002.
Beutel said the law’s passage could reduce, rather than increase, a business’s operational costs.
“I also know that there is a real cost to merchants in providing plastic bags, and there is a real cost to municipalities in clearing clogs caused by plastic bags in sewer and storm systems,” she said. “This should save money.”
Beutel disagreed with those who have asserted that plastic bags are cheaper to provide to shoppers.
“I am not sure that alternatives to plastic bags are more expensive,” she said. “Besides, carrying our own bags makes sense, is easy to do, and saves anyone who shops time and space for handling, storing and recycling plastic or paper bags.”
The new law provides up to $2 million in competitive loans that will be administered by CalRecycle to help businesses make the change to manufacturing reusable bags.
The bill won’t affect the 120 local governments that already passed ordinances banning single-use bags on one level or another.
Benicia didn’t pass bans, but across the Carquinez Strait, Martinez City Council passed a plastic bag ban June 4 that will become effective Jan. 1, 2015. It was delayed so retailers can use up their current supply.
In April 2007, San Francisco became the first city in the country to ban plastic shopping bags. Since then, the ban has been extended to more stores.
Richmond was the first Contra Costa County city to ban plastic bags, adopting an ordinance July 16, 2013 that became effective the first of this year. Those who fail to bring their own reusable bags may buy paper or reusable bags, the Richmond ordinance states.
Among the other Bay Area cities that have plastic bag bans or reusable bag ordinances are Brisbane, Burlingame, Colma, Cupertino, Daly City, Palo Alto, East Palo Alto, El Cerrito, Foster City, Half Moon Bay, Hercules, Los Altos, Los Gatos, Menlo Park, Mill Valley, Millbrae, Mountain View, Napa, Novato, Pittsburg, Pleasant Hill, Redwood City, San Anselmo, San Bruno, San Jose, San Mateo, San Pablo, San Rafael, Santa Rosa, South San Francisco, Sunnyvale and Walnut Creek.
San Mateo County’s 2012 reusable bag ordinance became a model for many cities’ laws. Santa Clara County’s ordinance was adopted the previous year.
The Alameda County Waste Management Authority adopted a plastic bag ban in 2012 that became effective the first of 2013 in both unincorporated areas as well as in its 14 cities. Sonoma County Waste Management Agency instituted its own plastic single-use bag ban this year.
Some cities, such as Manhattan Beach and Malibu, had such bans in place as early as 2008.
The bill Brown signed states that beginning July 1, 2015, grocery stores and pharmacies no longer can make single-use plastic bags available to shoppers. If paper bags are offered, they must be marked to show the recycled content. Starting July 1, 2016, convenience stores and liquor stores also will be prohibited from offering single-use plastic bags.
Local ordinances are grandfathered in by the new law, which also authorized the competitive loans to businesses moving toward manufacture of reusable bags.
Several Benicia residents and those providing services to the city had been monitoring the law’s progress.
Last month, Marie Knutson, recycling coordinator for Republic Services for Martinez and Benicia, said only 5 percent of plastic shopping bags are returned to the stores that are required to provide collection bins if they put sold merchandise in such bags.
The shopping bags are baled for international sale as plastic film that is used to make other products, Knutson said. Domestic use of non-virgin plastic lags behind that of other nations, she said, and conveyor belts that handle recycled objects get tangled when people throw the plastic bags into their home service recycling bins.
Mayor Elizabeth Patterson had hailed the plastic bag ban bill last month, saying it would help larger corporations because it provided uniformity of regulations.
But advocacy of a plastic bag ban in Benicia also came from Benicia High School students who were members of the award-winning Students for the Advancement of Global Entrepreneurship (SAGE).
At the Community Sustainability Commission’s Oct. 25, 2010 meeting, SAGE member Anna Distephano set two large glass jars on a table. One contained shredded bags, the other held plastic models of squid and jellyfish, the food on which sea turtles and other marine animals dine.
From a short distance, the contents looked the same.
Distephano said that more than 500 billion plastic bags would be made that year, about 1 million a minute, using 12 million barrels of oil.
Since the bags only break down into smaller pieces rather than wholly disintegrate, the plastic continues to litter land and water, eventually polluting beaches and collecting in various oceanic “garbage patches,” or gyres.
She told the panel that three of every five sea turtle deaths can be blamed on plastic consumption, and that the deaths are slow and painful. She blamed plastic on the deaths of 100,000 turtles, whales and other marine animals each year.
“I am happy to see the end of plastic bags!” Beutel said.
Thomas Petersen says
It is about time. All this means is making a minor tweak in your lifestyle. Not very hard or inconvenient in the least. Get yourself a handful of reusable bags (it does not matter what they are made of) put them in the trunk of you car, and you are set.
Robert M. Shelby says
Yes, Thomas, maybe twenty years ago the supermarkets were selling light canvas bags to minimize plastic waste. I still have several car trunk and closets. I’ll get ’em out, bleach-wash and
pet them back in service. There were also plastic-net, multi-use bags.
Bob Livesay says
I have never had a problem with plastic bags. My problem is with the public and their fauilure to use trash containers that are ever present where ever you may be. It is not plastic bags that are the problen it is the folks that are to lazy to drop them in the containers. Plastic bags have many good uses. I use them for garbage, storage, yard pick up and the dog poop that the dog owners who do not pick up after their animals. If the folks use plastic bags properly there is not a problem. So I would say the problen is not plastic bags but the public.
DDL says
Bob,
The Koch brothers are probably behind support for the plastic bags. They make millions of them every day and are using the proceeds to buy politicians:
SAY NO TO PLASTIC BAGS! SAY NO TO THE KOCHS!!!
Scratch the surface and you know the Koch Bros are behind everything.
BTW, Did you get your check yet? I haven’t.
John says
This is FANTASTIC!!! My grocery bill is going down according to Constance. Was not sure how I felt about this ban until I read that, now I am the biggest supporter of this ban.
Bob Livesay says
That was funny.
Matter says
Much ado about nothing. We should ban silly lawmakers at the same time we ban plastic bags.