The plastic bag ban bills are back.
With introduction of the thirteenth bill to regulate plastic bags in more than 10 years, consumer choice doesn’t stand a chance in California. And, unemployed Californians looking for a job can forget it – plastic bag companies will be just one more industry in manufacturing to get the boot out of the most business-unfriendly state in the nation.
I have been writing about the attempts to ban plastic bags for years. In June 2009, I wrote this story for the Washington Examiner, about how the eco-friendly shopping bags are Petri dishes of disgusting bacteria, and many stories at CalWatchdog about legislative attempts to ban the bags.
The possible cross contamination of food placed in bags contaminated by previous use in successive trips, as well as transfer of contaminants in the check-out packing process from one bag to another including the potential contamination of the more sanitary single-use plastic shopping bags and other first-use carry bag options.
This could also be a cause for concern for grocery checkout clerks, who may, without realizing it, be transferring bacteria from one shopper’s bag to the next, as well as contaminating themselves.
Legislation banning plastic bags — again
Last year, the plastic bag ban bills were authored by Assemblyman Marc Levine, D-San Rafael, and Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Pacoima.
“To continue the use of these bags would ignore the convincing body of global evidence proving that these bags are having a drastic effect on marine ecocultures,” said Levine. “Additionally, there are several easily available and affordable alternatives to plastic bags. We need to ban these bags once and for all.”
This year, the plastic bag ban will be co-authored by Sens. Alex Padilla and Kevin De Leon, and would ban single-use carry-out bags in California grocery stores starting July 1, 2015, and extend the to liquor stores and pharmacies in 2016, the Business Journal recently reported.
Despite a recent study by the National Center for Policy Analysis which found lawmakers’ banning or taxing such bags reduces economic activity and increases unemployment, the Legislature continues to put forward bills to prohibit grocery stores with more than $2 million in annual sales, or retailers with more than 10,000 square feet of floor space, from providing recyclable plastic bags to customers.
These stores would be required to make reusable grocery bags available for sale.
Details of the new bills are not yet available, but previous bills included:
* Beginning on January 1, 2015, full-line grocery stores with more than $2 million in annual sales or retailers with more than 10,000 square feet of floor space would be prohibited from providing single-use plastic bags to customers.
* From January 1, 2015 to July 30, 2016, stores above could provide recycled paper bags to customers.
* Stores subject to this bill would be required to make reusable grocery bags available for sale.
The plastic bag bill in 2012, SB 1219, lifted a prohibition on local taxes on plastic bags but extended the sunset of AB 2449 (Levine) which mandates plastic bag recycling at supermarkets. Governor Brown signed the bill into law in Sept.
All of the bag bills have required grocery stores to maintain records of the bag programs, and make the records available to the local jurisdiction or the Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery upon request.
Of course, these bills all allow government officials to levy fines for stores that violate the requirements.
Unfortunately for most of the bag ban bills that have been put forward in California over the years, the rationale for banning bags is based almost entirely on false information spread by environmental extremists.
Marine debris exaggerations and falsehoods
Bag ban proponents claim “roughly 10% of the debris that washes up on our beaches is plastic bags.” But, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “Plastic bags make up a fraction of one percent of the waste stream.” Moreover, a study by Oregon State University found that if the ocean was the size of a football field, the amount of total plastic (not just bags) wouldn’t even extend to the one-inch line.”
Proponents claim “hundreds of thousands of marine fish and mammals are killed annually as plastic bags float out to sea.” But according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, “To date there are no published studies specifically researching how many marine mammals die each year directly due to marine debris.”
Lawmakers and bag ban proponents have waged a misinformation campaign on this issue causing many people to actually believe that plastic bags kill 100,000 sea mammals and a million seabirds each year. Lawmakers use this emotional argument and trot out the much-used turtle with plastic bag in its mouth as proof. Unfortunately, not only is the story about the turtle grossly exaggerated, the London Times exposed the dead sea mammals and seabirds as a myth based on a typographical error. This figure “…is based on a misinterpretation of a 1987 Canadian study in Newfoundland, which found that, between 1981 and 1984, more than 100,000 marine mammals, including birds, were killed by discarded nets. The Canadian study did not mention plastic bags,” according to the Heartland Institute.
Better alternatives? Not quite
Bag ban proponents claim that paper is a better option, even though other previous bills have sought to ban or tax paper bags as well. Plastic grocery bags actually require 40 percent less energy to manufacture than paper bags. The production of plastic bags consumes less than 4 percent of the water needed to make paper bags.
Lawmakers and proponents of the bag bans reusable bags are better. There are studies proving that reusable bags are actually worse. The U.K.’s Environment Agency found that a standard cotton grocery bag must be reused 131 times “to ensure that they have lower global warming potential than” a single use of a plastic bag.
The same study determined it would take 7.5 years of using the same cloth bag before it’s a better option for the environment than a plastic bag reused three times.
And there are health risks associated with reusable bags. A study by the University of Arizona found that half of all reusable bags contained food-borne bacteria, and salmonella.. Last year, bacteria like these infected an Oregon girls’ soccer team with the norovirus after players ate food from a dirty reusable bag.
Plastic bags: single or multi-use?
Lawmakers calls grocery shopping bags “single-use bags,” yet most people use plastic bags multiple times before tossing them into the trash – nine out of ten people reuse them, in fact. Everything from trashcan liners, storage and carryall bags, to doggie poop pickup bags. And, of course, plastic bags are 100 percent recyclable and are used to create other plastic products, including plastic decking and benches, as well as more plastic bags.
A waste of time; a job killer
Driven by special interest and perhaps an abundance of time, all of the plastic bag ban bills would only impose another unnecessary tax on the consumer and once again penalize private industry.
In the U.S., the plastic bag industry employs more than 30,000 people (2,000 in California) and supports thousands more who supply products and services. This another industry California lawmakers plan on killing.
Correction: Sens. Kevin De Leon, D-Los Angeles, and Ricardo Lara D-Bell Gardens did not author bills last year to ban plastic bags; they led opposition to the bag ban bills.