If you've got the money, the candidates are all ears White House 'fall guy' was working with a safety net For anyone who has plastic grocery bags stuffed in the nooks and crannies of her pantry or whose conscience is pricked as yet another one hits the trash, a solution is at hand. Thanks to Assemblyman Lloyd Levine, D-Van Nuys, 7,000 large California grocery stores and pharmacies are now required, as of July 1, to take back plastic grocery bags. Signed by Gov.
Arnold Schwarzenegger in September, AB2449 also requires retailers to sell reusable bags. They must have public-education recycling programs and all plastic grocery bags labeled, "Please return to a participating store for recycling." In signing the bill, Gov.
Schwarzenegger acknowledged it does not do as much as some environmental groups and city leaders had hoped. The compromises to get the bill passed include no cities can assess a fee on plastic bags' use; no mandatory consumer refunds for bag recycling; and no recycling fees. AB2449 is, however, a first step in reducing the mountain of plastic bags — an estimated 600 plastic bags are used per second — clogging landfills, consuming crude oil, killing marine life, impairing waterways and costing taxpayers millions.
The plastic-bag recycling rate is very low, with estimates from 0.6 percent to 5 percent. For example, a major Ventura County trash hauler does not accept plastic grocery bags for recycling.
The governor said AB2449 will sunset in six years, allowing local governments time to develop additional programs or for the Legislature to "consider a more far-reaching solution." Some cities, such as San Francisco, have banned plastic grocery bags outright. The county of Los Angeles is considering a similar ban.
California is just the second state in the nation to enact a statewide plastic-bag recycling bill — Rhode Island is the other. Other countries acted on this problem much earlier, including Ireland, which has a "PlasTax," requiring retail customers to pay for plastic bags, resulting in a 90 percent reduction in their use. Other countries that discourage the use of plastic bags include Australia, Bangladesh, South Africa, Italy and Taiwan.
Californians Against Waste, a nonprofit environmental research and advocacy organization, estimates California retailers distribute 19 billion bags annually, creating 147,038 tons of waste or enough to circle the planet 250 times. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer quoted Vincent Cobb, founder of reuseablebags.com, as estimating 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are used worldwide every year.
These bags take a long time to disintegrate, with estimates ranging from 500 to 1,000 years. According to CAW, plastic marine debris has been documented to harm at least 267 species and is especially lethal to sea turtles. How many remember, as reported by the Post-Intelligencer, that the first plastic sandwich bags were introduced in 1957, department stores didn't start using plastic bags until the late 1970s and grocery chains until the early 1980s?
We got by without them not so long ago, so should be able to do so again. A minimal investment in reusable bags will pay off in a big way.
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