Plastic Bags Get Sacked

The new enemy of the environment? Plastic bags. Sure they were poetic in the movie “America Beauty” and are handier than some paper bags, but plastic bags have become a nuisance in neighborhoods and worse for the environment. That light airy bag is more than a choking hazard for the earth.

Over the weekend I stepped outside and heard a rustling sound behind a neighbor’s bush. No, it wasn’t a cat or a bird. It was a plastic bag. In its own cyclone, the bag turned round and round. Where did this bag come from? Did it escape from a nearby trashcan? Was it carried in with the clouds? And where was this bag going next? On my drive to work another plastic bag flew by me. What was going on?

Is there no solution for these voyaging sacks?

The answer may be in your recycling.

So you’re ready to head to the recycling center. You’ve separated the bottles from the cans. Plastic from glass. But, wait. You’re leaving your most important recyclables out. Before you trash the plastic bags you brought your cans and bottles in, head to your local drug or grocery store. Those plastic bags can now be recycled. While you don’t get nickels and dimes for it, you’re helping out the earth.

Assemblyman Lloyd E. Levine, D-Van Nuys, believes so. Levine authored the bill to create mandatory recycling bins for plastic bags. As of July 1, 2007, grocery stores and drug stores are required to have a recycling bin for plastic bags. The law also requires stores to print a message on the bag that these bags can be returned to the store to be recycled. This makes the decision of “paper or plastic?” a little more guilt-free.

Levine got the idea for the bill when he noticed many bags near the Los Angeles River along his running route. In an e-mailed statement, Levine noted the environmental and economic problems with all these free-flying bags:

"With Californians throwing away over 600 bags per second,
they are creating enough waste every year to circle the
planet over 250 times."

The cost?

“This all amounts to more litter to collect on our beaches
and state highways,which costs the state $303.2 million
each year,” Levine said. 

That plastic bag isn’t so innocent now.

Plastic bag bans are also taking place throughout California. San Francisco and Santa Monica have taken initiative to ban plastic bags and encourage shoppers to bring their own bag. On Feb. 27 the city of Santa Monica voted to create an ordinance that will ban “single use plastic bags” within the city. The ordinance may include fees for customers whom want a paper bag. The city of San Francisco passed its own ordinance banning plastic bags from large grocery stores in March of last year. According to the Sierra Club Web site: “When one ton of plastic bags is reused or recycled, the energy equivalent of 11 barrels of oil are saved.”

Some stores have already taken initiative to reduce their plastic bag use. Whole Foods Market plans to eliminate its plastic bags by Earth Day. That means Whole Foods will reduce the amount of plastic bags sent to each store and boost its assortment of reusable bags. Instead it will offer customers reusable bags or paper bags made from 100 percent “recycled fiber content.” Whole Foods also had a “Bring Your Own Bag Day” in January to encourage shoppers to cut back on their plastic bag usage. More than 50,000 reusable shopping bags were given away to celebrate this effort.

But Levine believes that this isn’t enough to make people change their habits.

He is authoring a new bill that will increase your cost at the grocery store. Assembly Bill 2058 will “require stores to meet recycling benchmarks and gives them the flexibility to charge at least 15 cents per plastic bag given to customers.” If Assembly Bill 2058 passes, local governments will collect this money. Levine hopes that this collection will go toward “litter abatement.”

Watch out, shoppers!

BYOB just took on a whole new meaning.