California Bans Single-Use Plastic Bags

[Webster]

New York Times: California Bans Single-Use Plastic Bags

LOS ANGELES — California has become the first state in the country to ban single-use plastic bags.

Gov. Jerry Brown on Tuesday signed into law a bill banning plastic shopping bags at supermarkets, liquor stores and other retail locations where customers have long relied on them.

Paper bags and reusable plastic bags will be available at checkout counters for a 10-cent fee designed to prod shoppers to remember their own reusable bags, and to reduce the number of plastic bags that end up clogging rivers, snagged on trees or taking up space in landfills. The law will take effect in July, though a coalition of bag makers has vowed to try to overturn it.

“This bill is a step in the right direction — it reduces the torrent of plastic polluting our beaches, parks and even the vast ocean itself,” Mr. Brown said in a written statement to announce the bill’s signing. “We’re the first to ban these bags, and we won’t be the last.”

The statewide law follows bag bans in more than 100 municipalities around California, including Los Angeles and San Francisco. As the bag-ban movement has progressed, the plastics industry has sunk millions of dollars into defeating the measures here and in other states. Industry groups argue that plastic bags are targeted unfairly as environmental ills, when paper bags and some reusable bags come with their own drawbacks.

On Tuesday, the American Progressive Bag Alliance, which has led the industry’s fight against bans, said it planned to gather signatures to get a repeal of the law onto the 2016 ballot in California.

“If this law were allowed to go into effect, it would jeopardize thousands of California manufacturing jobs, hurt the environment and fleece consumers for billions,” Lee Califf, the executive director of the alliance, said in a statement.

The group said its research showed that a majority of Californians opposed plastic bag bans.

Several municipalities reported reduced litter in waterways and streets after banning plastic bags. And environmental groups are now bullish that they can use their success in California to push for similar measures nationwide.

“California has led the way on everything from clean water to clean air to climate change,” said Nathan Weaver, a spokesman for Environment California, a statewide advocacy group. “This law will means a cleaner ocean for everyone, and we hope other places that care about their oceans, their rivers and their environment will look at this as well.”

...as California goes, so hopefully will go the rest of America...thoughts?

 

[Dee]

We've already done it here in Portland and it has not been devastating to the way we live our lives. In fact, I like the paper bags a bit better because they're still free and they're not as dangerous to the environment as plastic can be. I reuse them over again, and I have regular reusable bags anyway. I think more cities and states should jump on board with this, though.

 

[Dee]

We've already done it here in Portland and it has not been devastating to the way we live our lives. In fact, I like the paper bags a bit better because they're still free and they're not as dangerous to the environment as plastic can be. I reuse them over again, and I have regular reusable bags anyway. I think more cities and states should jump on board with this, though.

free you say? they charge anywhere from a nickel to ten cents per paper bag here. not cool

I knew they were doing that there. They don't charge anything here for the paper bags with the paper handles. But they do charge for reusable bags.

 

[WHO IS SERAFIN]

Just more nutty ideas from a nutty state.

 

[Webster]

Just more nutty ideas from a nutty state.

Wow, that's deep...shame we don't take more ideas from California; the country might be better off than it is now.

 

[DrLeftover]

"Nanny.... Nanny!!! The bad man has a plastic bag!"

 

[WHO IS SERAFIN]

Just more nutty ideas from a nutty state.

Wow, that's deep...shame we don't take more ideas from California; the country might be better off than it is now.

I am a deep guy. Yes no personal rights and freedoms going down the drain, broke and bankrupt, vast amounts of government corruption, full of illegal aliens putting a burden on the economy and the legal low income and middle income people who actually work. It sounds like paradise.

 

[Nebulous]

I don't mind using cloth bags just as long as I have enough of them and can remember to bring them every time. I suppose a good way to remember is to stick them back in my trunk after I've unloaded the groceries.

 

[WHO IS SERAFIN]

I don't mind using cloth bags just as long as I have enough of them and can remember to bring them every time. I suppose a good way to remember is to stick them back in my trunk after I've unloaded the groceries.

I do not mind using them either. You can stuff more in them and make fewer trips back to the car. Just banning and telling people what they can and cannot use is not the answer.

 

[Nebulous]

Just more nutty ideas from a nutty state.

im from california..kind if perplexed by your reply there.. whats nutty about it

California sucks. I can say that because I live there. I'd love to live in another state if I could.