Plastic bags outlawed in California.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Grocers no longer allowed to use plastic bags. Starts July 2015.  Much screaming from the bag companies who are one of the worst polluters on the continent IMHO.

[Easy Bakes 253]

they were trying to implement this ban in Dallas. dont think it went anywere. Edit : a City ordinance that make the retailers charge  10cents /bag fee

 

 

 

 

 

 

"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 so grocery store shareholders and their union partners can line their pockets," Lee Califf, executive director of the manufacturer trade group, told US media.

 

 

^

Sounds like a lobbyist opinion to me

 

every state should have a bottle/can return policy.

[Duke87 1,070]

No plastic and you have to pay for paper. Or in other words "use your own reusable bags or pay extra".

 

Legislating this is rather hardcore although realistically disposable shopping bags are waste which is not generally necessary, so I get the sentiment.

 

Speaking from the other coast, I do have some reusable bags but I don't always use them. Two reasons why not:

 

1) Sometimes I am shopping on the way home from the office. Given that I commute via public transit, using my own reusable bags in this circumstance would require lugging them all the way to work in the morning and all the way back in the evening on crowded subway trains. Not operationally efficient at all from my standpoint. Reusable bags are dead cargo when not filled with groceries and thus perversely it is easier to use them if you do your daily traveling by car than if you do it by public transit.

 

2) I use plastic grocery bags as trash/recycling bags. No need to spend money on trash bags when I've already got these other perfectly good bags to throw waste in, I say.

 

I do recognize that the bags are kinda wasteful though and when asked "would you like this in a bag" I tend to answer no.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

I have a set of reusable grocery bags.  These cloth bags sell of around $2 each and last for years.  The set I have now, I have had for at least five years and they are still going strong.  In this province, if you want your groceries in plastic bags you either supply them yourself or the store will charge you five cents a bag (which is an enormous margin). 

 

Some stores also supply (and charge for) large reusable plastic carry boxes suitable to fit into special carts in the store and on tracks at the check out.  I have used them, but they are too much for me now.

 

Somehow, Canadians seem to be more environmentally conscious than Americans.  Maybe it is because there are so few of us and so much environment.  I wouldn't call Canada overcrowded.

[Compdude787 916]

Speaking from the other coast, I do have some reusable bags but I don't always use them. Two reasons why not:

 

1) Sometimes I am shopping on the way home from the office. Given that I commute via public transit, using my own reusable bags in this circumstance would require lugging them all the way to work in the morning and all the way back in the evening on crowded subway trains. Not operationally efficient at all from my standpoint. Reusable bags are dead cargo when not filled with groceries and thus perversely it is easier to use them if you do your daily traveling by car than if you do it by public transit.

 

2) I use plastic grocery bags as trash/recycling bags. No need to spend money on trash bags when I've already got these other perfectly good bags to throw waste in, I say.

 

I do recognize that the bags are kinda wasteful though and when asked "would you like this in a bag" I tend to answer no.

When I lived in Seattle, they had a plastic bag ban and I hated it! The city government has failed to realize that plastic bags actually have legitimate uses besides taking your groceries home. I would often forget to bring reusable bags w/ me when I went to the store, so it's always annoying not to have any plastic bags. I use them for garbage bags too and when we lived in Seattle, we never had anything to use for trash bags unless we went shopping outside Seattle proper. Now that I live in Lynnwood, ~10 miles north of Seattle, we have all the plastic bags that our hearts could ever desire. I totally agree with you, @Duke87.

All I can say is that I have yet another reason to be glad that I don't live in California. (aka Commiefornia)

[Ocram's Razr 963]

Seattle is a small-ish city with a decent sized metropolitan area. The RadProgs in control of the city have been changing the laws in such a way, that they will soon destroy Seattle's economy. California is a large state so it will be hard to avoid some things through daily commutes though I can see the sensible people moving away, out of the state to places where they are more likely to thrive. It is also a matter of time before California destroys its cash cow, Silicon Valley. Tech startups in California are getting fewer, farther between, and less successful because of the regulation. Washington is not a good place to base digital services in because our government taxes that (and almost everything else). I read somewhere that some place in Colorado is the best place for startups.

--Ocram

[Odainsaker 2,133]

A few months ago a similar city ban was proposed here for San Antonio, but the proposal died pretty fast in City Council under a torrent of complaints.  On the plus side, the Solid Waste Management Department finally started accepting plastic bags as recyclables in residential bins, so long as residents first bundle the loose bags up.  The previous headache for SWMD's recycling efforts was that loose plastic bags simply blew all over their sorting site and hopelessly clogged their machinery, and the effort and manpower to collect each individual bag was futile and expensive.  Commercial users had already been recycling plastic bags bundled into larger bales.  Grocery stores here do sell reusable bags, and many would be glad to reduce to costs of both purchasing tons of new plastic bags and then further paying to haul away collected bales of them, but the convenience of disposable plastic among their consumer patrons still dominates.

 

For all the "Don't Mess With Texas" anti-littering campaigns, many parts of our city are pretty bad with litter and wind-scattered trash, of which most are consumer-disposable light plastics.  Shamefully, there are segments of highway which look like a garbage disposal truck somehow spilled its entire load along the side the roadway, and the storm runoff brings all this mess into our creek and river drainage systems, leaving the riverbanks and their trees pasted and festooned with soiled plastic bags.  They also get into our sewer system, creating freakishly disgusting system clogs and gumming up the machinery of the water treatment plants with layers of soiled plastic.  Instead of a progressive, socialist, regulatory hellhole, our citizens are left to wallow in garbage.

[AcmeSigns 97]

Apparently recycling the plastic bags is too much trouble for all of the ecologically-minded folks in the Bay Area and LA. An article I read about this law was that somewhere around 3% of the bags are recycled (of course, there was no way to verify that statistic) and so, of course, 'something had to be done'! Oddly, we've been recycling our plastic bags (taking them back to the store when not finding an alternate use for them as has been mentioned) for going on 10+ years (probably more) with very little effort.

 

This law is typical of what goes on in this backwards state...don't take responsibility for your actions - just pass a law that will effect effect everyone else to pay for your lazy inaction.