Ending the Era of Plastic Grocery Bags – California is Taking Bold Steps to Curb Unexamined Habits a
- Tree of Knowledge Research
- Aug 16, 2015
- 6 min read
It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No… It’s a plastic grocery bag floating away on a windy day. One of the most widely used conveniences in modern civilization has come under fire as California enacted Senate Bill 270 – a law that prohibits the distribution of plastic grocery bags.
Grassroots efforts by cities and counties in California sparked the anti-plastic bag movement through the enactment of local ordinances, which banned plastic bags at grocery stores and charge fees for paper bags. Proponents for banning plastic grocery bags cite widespread pollution as the paramount problem they seek to resolve with the ordinances.
Plastic bags began emerging in the American marketplace during the late 1950’s as sandwich bags and plastic dry cleaning bags.[1] It was not until 1977 that the plastic grocery bag was introduced into grocery stores with the purpose of creating an alternative choice to paper bags.[2] At the time, plastic bags became the best thing since sliced bread. The largest supermarket chains including Kroger and Safeway capitalized on the benefits plastic bags could make on their bottom line, since paper bags cost up to four times more when compared to plastic bags.[3] Customers also enjoyed the convenience of plastic bags with handles making groceries easier to carry. After only 37 years, billions of pounds of plastic debris is now swirling in rotating ocean currents known as gyres, taking up roughly 40 percent of the world’s ocean surface.[4] California is combating this plight with Senate Bill 270, fighting plastic bags at the source of their dispersal – grocery stores, retail stores, and restaurants.
In the San Francisco Bay Area, the Alameda County Waste Management Authority approved a plastic bag ban ordinance that went into effect January 1, 2013.[5] Additionally, a 10 cent price requirement was imposed on paper and reusable bags.[6] The intended effect of the ordinance is simple – to curb the wasteful behavior of consumers, reducing plastic bag pollution, and promoting the utilization of durable reusable bags.
The anti-plastic bag movement went statewide when Governor Jerry Brown signed first-of-a-kind legislation implementing the plastic bag ban which prohibits large grocery stores from offering single-use plastic bags.[7] The ban was originally set to take effect in July 2015, affecting grocery stores first. Then in 2016, other businesses are mandated to follow suit including liquor stores and convenience stores.[8] The state law, mirroring local ordinances, also allows stores to charge 10 cents for a reusable paper bag.[9]
The efforts to curb plastic grocery bag use in California did not come without resistance. According to the Associated Press, “moments after Brown signed the measure, the American Progressive Bag Alliance (APBA) called the plastic bag ban a “backroom deal between grocers and union bosses to scam California consumers out of billions of dollars without providing any public benefit – all under the guise of environmentalism.”[10] However, the paradox of this argument is: if consumers embrace the ultimate intent of the law and change their habits from throw away plastic bags to fixed-cost, reusable bags, they will ultimately spend very little on the fees for using plastic or paper bags under the new law, all while contributing to the reduction of waste generated by single-use bags, both plastic and paper alike Also, if a person forgets their reusable bag and must pay the $0.10 price for a paper or compostable bag, the profit from this purchase is required to go to offsetting costs associated with providing recycled paper, compostable, or reusable bags as well as with complying with other provisions of the law and, therefore, will not be a profit generator for grocery stores.[11] Another noteworthy aspect of the new law signed by Brown includes $2 million in loans to help single-use plastic bag manufacturers shift to producing reusable bags, further weakening the argument by lobbyists that the law will curtail jobs in California. [12]
Latest Developments
The plastics industry and bag manufacturers have successfully blocked Senate Bill 270, which was meant to take effect this summer on July 1, 2015. The California Secretary of State announced that opponents secured enough signatures to vote on the law through a referendum in 2016 – effectively putting the bag ban on hold until then. The plastic bag industry spent $3.2 million campaigning against the law, according to Mark Murray of the advocacy group Californians vs. Big Plastic. Murray stated that California voters support the ban. [13] San Francisco became the first major U.S. city to ban plastic bags in 2007. Los Angeles announced a ban earlier this year, along with Seattle, Chicago, Portland, and Austin. [14]
The American Progressive Bag Alliance (APBA), a group that represents the plastics bag industry, is thrilled that the state ban has now been pushed to a referendum. Lee Califf, director of the group stated, “California voters will now have the chance to vote down a terrible law.” Still, an alleged discrepancy exists in the method used for gathering signatures of those in opposition to the ban. The APBA amassed more than 800,000 signatures and more than 500,000 have been declared valid by county registrars. Supporters of the ban asked California’s Attorney General to investigate, claiming that the workers who gathered the signatures misled signees by characterizing the ban as a tax or suggesting that signing the petition would advance the ban, not repeal it – clearly raising concerns of fraudulent and deceptive behavior. [15]
Reflection
Perhaps Sten Gustaf Thulin, the Swedish engineer who invented the marvel,[16] did not foresee the adverse consequences of his work when he perfected the plastic bag in the early 1960s.[17] Plastic bags are petroleum-based and therefore have an extremely long life-span, taking between 500 to 1000 years to decompose.[18] All too often, plastic bags are carelessly disposed of and end up in waterways, forests, and the ocean, making them almost impossible to remove. Estimates for the cost of managing plastic bag litter in California each year ranges from $37 million to $107 million.[19] The unfortunate truth is that taxpayers pay exorbitant amounts of money to clean up bags that escape our hold and float off into our environment – so while the cost of plastic bags is seemingly negligible at the grocery store, the total cost, including negative externalities, is enormous. Additionally, the harm to animals and fish is a paramount concern. Over 200 marine species have been documented by scientists to be harmed by plastic marine debris because it mimics food such as jellyfish.[20] Once in the water, plastic tends to break down over time into small fragments, thereby aggravating removal efforts. These toxic totes have transcended their status of being a useful tool and instead have become an environmental and taxpayer nightmare.
Even well developed countries promote harmful social behavior with respect to our treatment of the environment. Legendary Environmentalist and Author, Aldo Leopold said it best when describing our view of the land upon which we depend, “We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.” Eliminating plastic bags will help bring light to unexamined and wasteful consumer habits that have led to the pollution of land and sea for decades. Despite fierce opposition, the trend to abolish the use of reusable plastic grocery bags and unchecked habits has taken root in California. The question now becomes, will other states follow suit?
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[2] Id.
[3] John Roach, Are Plastic Grocery Bags Sacking the Environment?, National Georgraphic News, (September 2, 2003) avaialable at: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/09/0902_030902_plasticbags.html
[4]Claire Le Guern Lytle, When the Mermaids Cry: The Great Plastic Tide, Coastal Care, available at http://coastalcare.org/2009/11/plastic-pollution/. See also, Colette Wabnitz & Wallace J. Nichols, Plastic Pollution: An Ocean Emergency, 129 Marine Turtle Newsl. 1, 1 (2010), available at www.seaturtle.org/mtn/PDF/MTN129.pdf.
[5] Californians Against Waste, Plastic Bags: Local Ordinances, accessed on 10/27/2014, available at http://www.cawrecycles.org/issues/plastic_campaign/plastic_bags/local.
[6] Id.
[7] Katy Steinmetz, California Becomes First State to Ban Plastic Bags, Time Magazine, Sept. 30, 2014, accessed on 10/27/2014, available at http://time.com/3449887/california-plastic-bag-ban/
[8] Id.
[9] Id.
[10] Associated Press, Governor Signs California Statewide Ban on Plastic Bags, accessed on 11/10/2014, available at http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/Governor-Signs-California-Statewide-Ban-on-Plastic-Bags-277612271.html#ixzz3HOm6kAJu.
[11] National Conference of State Legislatures, State Plastic and Paper Bag Legislation (January 22, 2015), available at: http://www.ncsl.org/research/environment-and-natural-resources/plastic-bag-legislation.aspx
[12] Id.
[13] Jim Miller, California Bag Ban on Hold Pending 2016 Vote, accessed on 8/17/2015, available at http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article11084876.html
[14] Ben Rooney, California Plastic Bag Ban Delayed, accessed on 8/17/2015, available at http://money.cnn.com/2015/02/25/news/california-plastic-bag-ban-delay/
[15] Patrick McGreevy, California’s Plastic-bag Ban Put on Hold by Ballot Referendum, accessed on 8/17/2015, available at http://www.latimes.com/local/political/la-me-pc-california-plastic-bag-ban-20150223-story.html
[16] Environmental Studies: The Common Plastic Bag, Oxford Learning College, accessed on 10/27/2014, http://www.oxfordcollege.ac/news/environmental-studies-the-common-plastic-bag.
[17] See Id.
[18] Environmental Studies: The Common Plastic Bag, Oxford Learning College, accessed on 10/27/2014, available at http://www.oxfordcollege.ac/news/environmental-studies-the-common-plastic-bag; David K.A. Barnes et al., Accumulation and Fragmentation of Plastic Debris in Global Environments, 364 Phil. Transactions Royal Soc'y Biological Sci. 1985, 1993 (2009).
[19] Californians Against Waste, The Problem of Plastic Bags, accessed on 10/27/2014, available at http://www.cawrecycles.org/issues/plastic_campaign/plastic_bags/problem.
[20] Id.
