By Frank Gormlie
A key committee of the San Diego City Council came out today in strong support for a ban of plastic bags. The Rules and Economic Development Committee took a unanimous vote in directing staff to construct an ordinance that would ban plastic bags at city grocery stores and other retail sites within the city.
The proposal at this stage of its process would ban plastic bags in supermarkets, and other retail sites that include large stores that sell food, drug stores, convenience, hardware and clothing stores. It also has a requirement that stores charge 10 cents a paper bag, but exempting restaurants, nonprofits, food stamp recipients, and produce and meat products.
Another element of the initiative requires the city to provide for distribution of reusable bags as well as public education. Staff was directed to return on October 23rd with a progress report. The committee is also asking the mayor’s office to conduct outreach efforts with environmental groups and businesses that would be affected by an ordinance, and for the City Attorney’s Office to draft a law.
If the City ultimately passes this measure, it will join Solana Beach and 80 other cities in California, including Los Angeles and Hollywood. Encinitas is also putting together a similar proposal.
Committee Chairwoman Sherri Lightner told the media:
“San Diego is poised to become one of the largest cities to take such a positive step towards bettering our environment. This is about protecting our ocean, our canyons, our waterways and landfills.”
Lightner also said:
“They have a cost associated with dealing with these plastic bags at the landfill. And then there’s the cost of the bags in the storm water system, on the streets, roads and in our parks.”
Another supporter of the ban is Interim Mayor Todd Gloria, who stated:
“Plastic bags cause environmental damage that can be avoided with the ordinance being considered. Our neighborhoods, our beaches, our waterways, our landfills and our overall environment will benefit from fewer plastic bags. I will work with city staff to develop an effective ordinance.”
San Diego Councilman and mayoral candidate David Alvarez is definitely on board, he told the media:
“That’s a big part of this campaign … is to let them know the harm that it causes the environment and how easy it is to get your own bag and reuse it every time and it’s part of changing the culture.”
An unlikely ally is the California Grocers Association. Their representative Sarah Paulson Sheehy stated that her organization was “comfortable” with a ban on the bags, but they wanted the law to include all retailers and wanted it to be similar with the bans in other cities. Sheehy claimed that in cities where bans were in effect, more than 90% of customers were bringing in reusable bags within 6 months of the law going into force.
For years, environmentalists have been organizing to get the ubiquitous white bags out of our environment as plastic bags are found throughout the state, on beaches, watersheds and oceans, where some marine mammals and birds try to consume them.
Surfrider Foundation has been working on the issues for years. Surfrider volunteers collected thousands of signatures and delivered them to the City Council.
The City of San Diego just spent $160,000 in the most recent fiscal year picking up the bags, including those that hang out in the Miramar Landfill area, according to the Environmental Service Department.
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Hey everyone – don’t forget to vote in our current poll on the ban of plastic bags over on the sidebar.
Having been involved in the Surfrider effort years ago, I’m thrilled to know this is actually on the city council agenda! Looks like it has bi-partisan support, so I believe this is going to happen . . .
I can’t imagine HOW this issue relates to the proper role of government. If they would just enforce the littering laws on the books…
This is a great example of “the more their plans fail, the more the failures plan”
It would cost far more to enforce littering laws than it will cost to remove plastic bags entirely. Do you really want police spending their time on littering? This actually requires very little government comparatively.
Brian, the so-called “free market” has been in control of plastic bags since their inception, and look where it’s got us. We can see the bags everywhere, not to mention filling up our landfills. This is exactly the role of government to step in where private enterprise and capitalism has failed us and the environment.
Thank you Frank. And let’s all free Brian Brady from government
control.
I think you’re missing the point. The market values plastic bags much more than not. Plastic bags are cheap to make, recycle, and dispose of. If the market didn’t value plastic bags (as many of you don’t), they wouldn’t be so cheap.
While I understand that they fill up landfills, the people who run said landfills don’t seem to think it’s a problem. If they did, they would charge much more to dispose of those plastic bags. Now…THAT might just be the problem (disposal costs are being socialized instead of properly allocated to the plastic bags). Public landfills are a serious enabler of bad environmental policy.
I suppose public landfills could refuse to dispose of plastic bags (citing an inability to allocate disposal costs). Private landfills would then have to pick up the slack. At that point, we’d see just how much of a problem plastic bags really do present.
“Banning” a household product, which makes people’s lives better, seems really silly. So does subsidizing that product (which, in effect, public landfills do to plastic bags). Stop the subsidy and you’ll probably see the results you want
Ah, Brian, the catch: You say, ” ‘Banning’ a household product, which makes people’s lives better” – “better” you say? That’s a value judgement – and here is where you bias takes over. What’s better about plastic bags that paper can’t handle and re-useable cloth bags? Our lives are not better because these bags are clogging up our environment.
“What’s better about plastic bags that paper can’t handle and re-useable cloth bags?”
I can think of at least a half-dozen things a recycled plastic bag can do: protect fruit from frost, feces disposal (human and animal), packing material, booties to keep carpets clean, segregate wet clothes from dry ones in a gym bag, and insulate pipes. BONUS: they make great waste can liners too.
Plastic bag manufacturing releases far less CO2 into the environment than paper bag manufacturing does.
“Our lives are not better because these bags are clogging up our environment.”
That’s a value judgement too, Frank and you are citing the need to deploy force as a failure of the free market. I challenge that because plastic bags don’t operate in a free market; their disposal costs are socialized rather than allocated properly. This is the reason they are so cheap and plentiful.
We can agree that their disposal is a problem. The free market didn’t cause that problem—but it CAN solve it.
Actually, it makes a lot of sense if you actually want to effect change in individual behavior that contributes significantly to a public problem with significant public costs. See seat belts, smoking cessation, raised drinking age, car seat regulations . . . Policy changes brought about dramatic reductions in collision fatalities and smoking.
And new studies being conducted show that the reusable bags harbor bacteria that can be harmful. Not sure what is worse – bacteria that can cause disease or plastic bags in the landfills.
Judi and Brian, It’s not just about plastic bags in the landfills. A lot of them end up in the ocean where they form a massive garbage dump in the Pacific, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, an area twice the size of the continental US. They are literally strangling our oceans’ life. If we want our oceans to be fit for aquatic life, we need to get all this plastic crap out of them and not be continually adding to it. Otherwise, our oceans like our atmosphere with carbon dioxide will just become a gigantic garbage dump coated with plastic.
More misguided legislation geared more toward indulging people’s desires to “make a difference” than make a meaningful difference. At least this won’t cost a lot or make things worse like carbon trading schemes.
First off why not get these retailers to switch to a biodegradable alternative? Secondly is the problem really these particular bags, or is it sloppy waste management practices? All my bags go in the proper city owned receptacle, picked up by the city’s fancy truck- if you’re telling me they can’t get those in the ground without them ending up in the ocean or blowing in the breeze you don’t need new bags but better waste management.
Finally the giant garbage patch is a real issue, but this will likely not affect that in the slightest bit- all the research I have seen regarding ocean currents in the pacific suggest the source of that is not Western North America but in the SouthEast quadrant.
(FWIW thank you Judi Curry for raising an issue I hadn’t heard of yet. And who’s going to handle the reusable bags, a grocery store bagger or the customer? So the person who is in line before me never washes their bag and maybe it’s a rainy day and they pull out their wet bag filthy with bacteria from the rotting remnants of a dozen previous trips to the store, depositing that all over the counter or a bagger’s hands- then I get it all over mine? Has the county health department weighed in on how they are going to oversee all this? Who do I sue when I get some weird disease requiring the amputation of my arms and legs?)
I think this is a bit over the top. I use my own bags (mostly coated bags with a ribbed handle from Trader Joe’s, I like the size and they stand up in the back of the car) and the store bagger puts things in. Everything you buy is packaged anyway, there isn’t any old rotted remains! In San Diego, people put their groceries in the car, then unload them right away at home; I’ve never seen a wet bag.
I always hated those plastic store bags, they’re all floppy and things roll out of them in the trunk of my car. the few I do accumulate get recycled back at the store. And I have a friend who is able to REALLY use them, she recycles them at a food bank and can choose baked goods, produce and other foodstuffs.
For those odd little purchases you could have a string bag in your pocket or purse, like they do in Europe.
You’re using your personal experience as an expectation of the behavior of the masses, which is a little naive. I take a bath or shower daily, if I miss it I feel positively filthy. I know more than one person who admits that they bathe once a week and don’t feel that is unusual at all. Needless to say we can’t expect everyone’s practices to be the same as ours.
On another note it’s interesting that this issue is geared toward “saving the planet” and I couldn’t help but note this statement:
“In San Diego, people put their groceries in the car, then unload them right away at home; I’ve never seen a wet bag.”
I often ride my bicycle to the grocery store for smaller loads if I can’t get by a store on my way to somewhere else, rather than burn a piece of a dinosaur to get there. As well lots of less fortunate folks either don’t have a car or may have to park a significant distance away, lacking a large residence with an attached garage or the like. So again use your imagination if you must, a lot of scenarios exist outside your own experience.
In the end of course my comment was over the top, especially the part about diseases requiring amputations, I was being facetious, it’s my style. However the public health issues raised first by Judi are real, not all foods is tightly packaged- produce, anyone… and retail establishments are tightly regulated and inspected, which separates us from third world cesspools. Having consumers bring textile fiber containers into grocery stores, which may have no disinfectant or cleaning ever, and have them in contact with shopping carts and display/checkout surface is a real bacterial risk.
As for that little string bag in your pocket, I’m sure my dad would have loved that and kept it in the same pocket as his booger vault (AKA handkerchief)- again a practice abhorred by many and embraced by others. I’d rather not know the guy bagging lettuce just sprayed down by an employee with water, next to me in the produce section into a “string bag”, dripping into the merchandise, does the same. (whether he bathes daily or weekly)
Again, over the top. Perhaps we members of the public who are conscientious and not using flabby dirty cloth bags and not leaning over the lettuce with our dirty string bags, could see some monetary value in bringing our own bags. Say a discount on our grocery bill.
And yes, I was wrong not to include people who bike or walk in the rain. I will again use an example from my own experience. I lived for several years in Hungary, and also the UK, where you bag your own groceries in a store. And we had no car, so walking was the thing, or taking the bus. For shopping we used a grocery cart on wheels which was winterized and had a cover protecting the contents from the rain.
If you are critical of people taking the car to the supermarket, why not be critical also of people who are using up stores of petroleum using all those plastic bags?
Americans are resourceful and creative. We need people who see both sides of this issue to come up with a solution. I guess I come across as earnest and not as facetious. That’s the beauty of these comments, all sides represented.
“If you are critical of people taking the car to the supermarket, why not be critical also of people who are using up stores of petroleum using all those plastic bags?”
This is why:
“MYTH: According to many websites and environmental groups, plastic bag manufacturing uses a large percentage of the crude oil that is consumed in the US. Some suggest that eliminating plastic bags would reduce our dependence on oil.
TRUTH: American plastic bags are made from natural gas, NOT oil. In the U.S., 85 percent of the raw material used to make plastic bags is produced from natural gas.
Bags are made from is a waste product of refining either oil or natural gas that will exist whether converted into plastic or not. If not converted, this waste would be burned off, releasing greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.
Some groups pushing for bans point out that the equivalent of 12 million barrels of oil are used annually to make plastic bags. What they don’t mention is that the US consumes 18 million barrels per day.
Banning or taxing plastic bags will do nothing to curb oil consumption.
MYTH: Most proposed bag bans and taxes use statistics based on an assumption that plastic bags are only used once.
TRUTH: The vast majority of the population reuse plastic grocery bags at least once. As trash bin liners, for picking up after pets, as lunch sacks, holding wet laundry, etc. Plastic bags are also very easy to recycle, and most grocery stores provide bag recycling bins.
Judith, They do give you a discount at Sprout’s for every bag you bring in. It’s not much, but it’s something.
Oh man, I really hope I never get reusable shopping bag disease. Sounds really scary.
Reusable bags are the way to go. Each customer should be required to bring their own bags or purchase them at the store. Numerous times I’ve seen store clerks put one item into a plastic bag. I take it out and carry the one item with me. Most of the time we take our reusable bags into the store with us, but we forget some times. We store them under the seat of the car. People have been doing this for years in Europe, and I don’t think there have been any epidemics reported attributable to poor bag hygiene. Should we really strangle the planet in plastic to insure that absolutely no one will contract a disease due to someone else’s filthy reusable bag? As if plastic bags were the epitome of disease prevention. Ridiculous!
“Each customer should be required to bring their own bags or purchase them at the store.”
And what if they don’t? Will the store refuse to serve them? Put all the items, (including many products themselves wrapped in plastic, around a box, which inside contains more plastic) in the cart and let the customer fumble with dropping them between the cart to car to home? Who will be in charge of the enforcement arm of this legislation, and what will the penalties be? Will people be cited, then possibly jailed if they don’t pay fines, for “shopping with plastic”? All for what, because I saved a plastic bag on my capri sun juice drinks which is a box, with 10 plastic bagged drinks, each with a plastic straw attached that comes in its own plastic wrapper?
I suggest others who wish to avoid this madness do as I plan to- go to Food 4 Less where you bag your own, and before the bag ban casually slip a new stack of bags in with your groceries and that should give you a decent supply of illegal bags to thumb your nose at misguided legislation meant to indulge the consciousness of meddling do gooders everywhere, and create jobs for jack booted government drones to throw us to the ground and haul us off to jail for not pretending to be as green as everyone else. And all those bags I use will go in my trash can as they always have, next to the Capri Sun Juice Bag overpackaging, the real culprit you people won’t dare attack because unlike the common citizen they’re not a pushover.
“As if plastic bags were the epitome of disease prevention. Ridiculous!”
As if taking a few bags out of the picture instead of tightening the ship of public waste management will stop the planet from being strangled in plastic? Do you believe this will matter at all to the litterbugs out there and isn’t just an inconvenience to responsible folks?
“We store them under the seat of the car. ”
Where rear seat passengers put their feet, where cousin Eddie wipes his boogers, where french fries from the drive through go to die- as well as all the candy and ice cream the kids drop. Somehow I’m not swayed by the safe food handling practices going on here. Really what you’re missing is the exchange of the public’s personal germs and items in a common area where food products are sold and in contact with those germs in an unrefrigerated state, left that way in transport, then taken home and later consumed. Your bag stored under your seat that never gets washed with several years of weekly use including leaking meats, poultry, etc, placed on a counter and dragged away, then the next customer’s products placed on that counter where it picks up those germs, gets on the packaging and sits there in the hot sun in the car for the trip home. What could be wrong there? Have you ever worked in a restaurant? The county puts “C” placards in the windows of establishments that do that.
It’s really a pointless argument because it’s obvious these practices will be in violation of the most basic food handling rules, you don’t have to agree with that just watch it unfold as the health dept steps in and modifies this to make it fit standards. The fact I’m hearing things like “stored under the seat” or “carried around in your pocket” are pretty good evidence none of you have been through the county mandated safe food handling course required of food workers and these assurances aren’t credible.
John – I guess y0u haven’t shopped at CostCo recently. They do put things back in the cart, although they will ask you if you want a box. Doesn’t seem like a big deal.
I used to, and they often ran out of boxes. Moreover, Costco items are of sufficient size and bulk they make reasonable size bags superfluous and redundant. You can’t even buy anything small there if you wanted to. What works there won’t at Ralphs, Vons or even 7-11.
It might seem from first view at my comments I am anti-green, but that’s hardly the case, for example my comments on the water quality in the SD and Mission Bays:
http://sandiegofreepress.org/2013/09/san-diego-for-free-la-playa-beach-point-lomas-wonderful-hidden-beach/
and personally I ride a bike absolutely as often as possible and got on board with rechargeable batteries way back in the ’80’s.
What I strongly object to and it’s nearly a pet peeve for me, is short sighted green legislation pushed hastily with little deep thought just to appease those who merely wish to pat themselves on the back they’re doing something good, when in reality the policy could even be doing more harm.
This sounds harsh but please hear me out with this:
A perfect example I often use is the Shipbreaking debacle that’s been going on for about a decade in Indian Ocean coastal waters. That didn’t come about by chance or accident. After the Exxon Valdez spill, activists in Europe pushed for a virtual immediate ban-virtual meaning within a year or so, very short time in that industry- on single hulled petroleum and chemical tankers operating in any European ports. They got their way, and within that year over 2500 hulls of various registry were rendered obsolete and worthless to their owners. The conventional shipbreaking yards were completely overwhelmed, leaving little choice for the owners but to scuttle them wherever anyone would take them.
In effect to prevent a possible environmental catastrophe, they did in fact create a thousand equal ones. Just on someone else’s coast and killing other people. There is no doubt the activists involved still sleep well at night and the Greenpeace site on shipbreaking has lots of emotionally geared material, but nary a word on the fact their ideological brethren- and maybe they themselves- caused the whole thing. Just to feel “green”.
This I find may have similar issues. Say what you will about the source but I believe on every single aspect of this, the facts show this may be ineffective or, if replaced by paper bags, even worse in the grand scheme:
“The British Government admitted that plastic bags were under attack, because they are a “symbol.””
(Note the last link has a page, if you click the sidebar link “reusable bags are unsanitary”, detailing a public health incident in Oregon similar to what I’ve described above)
I did take the source, an industry group, with all due scrutiny. Much of the argument is common sense and needs little fact checking. If their claims can be factually debunked I’ve an open mind to see it.
They usually do wrap meats in plastic before they put them into the reuseable bags. Your comment about all the ridiculous packaging that comes with a lot of packaged goods is right on, and that should also be a target – to reduce the amount of superfluous packaging – especially plastic – that comes with a lot of goods from supermarkets and drug stores. Besides some of the plastic packaging is almost impossible to get off.
If this ban becomes a reality:
My gas consumption will increase driving to towns where there is no ban. When I can’t do that, I’ll have to buy plastic bags for the various purposes the banned bags used to serve. Either way, my and other people’s monthly expenses go up, which are already a strain after other democrats in power legislated our and so many other people’s income downward.
The economy & a fiscally wise government are bigger fish to fry right now than so many environmental matters, this one being especially ridiculous.
environmental
Here’s a pretty simple solution that may have evaded you, Jeff: Buy a couple of those reusable grocery bags for $1 like just about everyone else has. I have three of them myself. They’re pretty sturdy, they hold a LOT more items than the plastic bags do, which makes them pretty darn convenient, and you just hang them up in the pantry until the next time you need to go shopping. The only (minor) challenge is to remember to bring your bags with you when you head out to the store. You can even store them in your car so that you don’t forget…..and who knows? They might even come in handy for other uses.
True ignorance is saying that you’ll drive beyond the city limits simply out of spite, and then blame the additional cost to you on the city ordinance. That’s asinine. It is your choice–and your choice alone–to travel an extra 10 miles just to go grocery shopping instead of making a very minor adjustment to your routine. Whose fault is that? Hell, the stores even give you a discount for every bag of your own that you use!
So, you have two choices…..well, three actually: You can spend a few bucks (literally) and buy the reusable bags that will last you for YEARS; you can learn to live with paper bags; or you can choose to spend the additional time and money on gas just to “teach those guys a lesson.” Yeah, you’ll show them alright!
Bottom line: Many other cities have enacted similar ordinances, and their residents have survived quite nicely. Somehow I think you will too.
Fantastic job of missing the point, Andy. Did you just happen to miss the “I’ll have to buy plastic bags for the various purposes the banned bags used to serve” part, or would it have made your condescending message lose its luster?
This is all typical busybody nonsense. People who push green legislation talk a good game, but this is all about control. Saying stuff like “So, you have two choices…..well, three actually: You can spend a few bucks (literally) and buy the reusable bags that will last you for YEARS; you can learn to live with paper bags” is the exact presumptuous attitude that only reinforces your ignorance of the point, and only makes others want to tell you to mind your own business.
Bottom line: most cities leave well enough alone, and the environment has survived quite nicely.