Environmentalists felt a progressive bill was in the bag to make California the first state to ban "urban tumbleweeds" – those ubiquitous plastic shopping sacks.
But the advocates were wrong.
On
Aug. 31, in its end-of-session flurry of horse trading and law making,
the Senate rejected a statewide ban on retailers’ use of throwaway
plastic bags. That came after an end-of-session flurry of lobbying and
advertising by the plastics industry against such a ban.
With
the Senate falling seven votes short on AB 1998 (which had already
passed the Assembly), the advocates’ focus returns to city councils and
county boards.
Now a host of counties and cities is preparing
draft ordinances encouraging reusable bags while banning plastics bags
and, oftentimes, slapping a surcharge on paper bags.
In Santa
Monica, some retailers have voluntarily withdrawn plastic bags in
anticipation of a city law, which is due to get its first reading on
Oct. 12.
Some store owners feel such a local law would give them cover.
"A
lot of times customers feel that they’re entitled to a free bag at a
store," said Dean Kubani, director of the Office of Sustainability for
Santa Monica. "When everybody has to do it, it’s easier."
Carol
Misseldine, coordinator for the Green Cities California coalition,
combed through her emails and counted 31municipalities either preparing
bag-ban ordinances or passing resolutions supporting AB 1998. Many are
seaside communities where a lot of voters are beachcombers sick of
seeing masses of washed-up kelp and seaweed tangled with plastic trash.
Green Cities California has tried to hasten the process by
making public a Master Environmental Assessment that cities can use in
building an Environmental Impact Report for a bag-ban ordinance.
A
wave of new bans in cities and counties might give "courage" to
Sacramento law makers to take on the issue again and craft a consistent
state standard, Misseldine said.
The new prospective laws this
fall and winter would go in the books alongside the following
California municipalities that have already passed plastic bag laws:
San Francisco (the pioneer in 1997), Malibu, Palo Alto, the town of
Fairfax, Manhattan Beach and Oakland. Implementation in the latter two
cities was stymied by lawsuits filed by industry groups, such as the
Save the Bags Coalition in Manhattan Beach.
The effort is international as well: Plastic bags have been banned in China, India and Bangladesh.
The
most populous county in the U.S., Los Angeles, has authorized a plastic
bag ban contingent upon the county reaching trash reduction goals and
the potential for the state passing a ban.
Los Angeles County
Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky reports on his Web site that the county
could have a draft ordinance ready as soon as October, and other cities
in the county will follow suit. One of them, Calabasas, is waiting to
see details in Los Angeles County’s EIR for the policy, said city
public information officer Michael Hafken. City officials earlier this
year had discussed the possibility of Calabasas passing a bag ordinance.
Ventura City Manager Rick Cole expects such an ordinance to be on the council agenda as early as Sept. 20. Cole recently blogged
about the prevalence of plastic bags in "the Jungle," the undergrowth
in the Ventura River bottom where he pitched in on a cleanup with
college students.
Among municipalities with recent discussions
about drafting plastic bag laws are the cities of San Jose and Redondo
Beach, and the counties of Marin, Santa Clara and Santa Cruz, according
to media reports.
In Santa Barbara, staff this fall expect to
bring a proposal for a voter survey to the City Council. The survey
would examine support for a city tax on paper and plastic bags, and the
potential for making mandatory the city’s voluntary effort to encourage
the use of reusable bags, said Lorraine Cruz Carpenter, environmental
specialist for the city.
The city has teamed with the California
Grocers Association and environmental groups in the Where’s Your Bag?
program, encouraging shoppers to tote reusable bags.
The Santa
Monica ordinance would ban plastic and authorize a 20-cent charge for
paper, with 3.5 cents allotted for the city for costs of outreach and
implementation, and the remainder to go to the stores to promote
reusable bags, said Kubani.
"As far as the issue that this is
a tax and it is going to hurt Santa Monica business, we haven’t heard
that in our conversations with the chamber of commerce and the public,"
said Kubani.
Plastic bags fail to break down in landfills for
generations. Research has also shown that paper bags are a drag on the
environment, in part because of heavy energy consumption in their
manufacture.
Santa Monica prepared an Environmental Impact
Report and put it out for public comment. City staff has been carefully
responding to comments, Kubani said.
Kubani has been working
closely with the city attorney’s office to prepare for the potential of
a lawsuit. Kubani said he feels the draft ordinance is "airtight."
Kubani
expects compliance to be good, along the lines the city has experienced
with its ban on polystyrene (such as Styrofoam) containers for takeout
food, implemented in 2008. There are provisions for members of the
public and environmental groups to report violations.
Lance Howland can be reached at [email protected]