Huntington Beach Next City to Ban Plastic Bags?
By Sarah (Steve) Mosko, PhD
Appeared in: Surf City Voice, 14 Aug 2011
On August 1st, Long Beach became the thirteenth jurisdiction within California to ban single-use plastic carryout bags at supermarkets and large retailers. Huntington Beach (HB) could soon join that list if HB City Council members Connie Boardman, Devin Dwyer and Joe Shaw can convince other council members.
A proposal to develop an ordinance to ban flimsy, disposable plastic carryout bags is on the Monday, August 15 HB City Council meeting agenda.
If a HB ordinance were to be modeled after the Long Beach one, it would also include a 10 cent customer fee for each paper bag dispensed, as the goal is not to convert to disposable paper bags but rather to encourage use of reusable bags which can be used over 100 times.
The Long Beach ban took effect after a pivotal unanimous California Supreme Court decision on July 14 which eases the way for local plastic bag bans by ruling that the City of Manhattan Beach did not have to complete a lengthy study of the environmental impact of disposable paper bags before baring retailers from dispensing plastic ones.
Such environmental impact reports are costly, and the plastic bag industry has successfully used them to block a municipality from enacting a local plastic bag ban by suing the city when an environmental impact report has not been performed.
Californians consume more than 12 billion single-use plastic bags per year, according to Environment California, a state-wide environmental advocacy organization. Very few get recycled, in part because plastic bags are rarely included in curbside recycling programs.
Plastic bag litter is not only an eyesore on land but also fouls waterways and kills marine animals who mistake the bags for food. A floating plastic bag resembles a jellyfish, which probably explains why plastic bags are found clogging the digestive tracks of dead sea turtles and marine mammals like whales and dolphins.
Plastic bags are a significant source of ocean pollution because, like all plastics derived from petroleum, they are non-biodegradable and are thought to persist in the ocean for up to hundreds of years as they just fragment over time into smaller bits of plastic.
The Long Beach-based Algalita Marine Research Foundation has been measuring the buildup up of plastic debris in an area of the Pacific twice the size of Texas and dubbed the “Pacific Garbage Patch” which, in 1999, already contained six times more plastic than zooplankton. Preliminary analysis of ocean samples collected less than a decade later indicate that the ratio of plastic to plankton has risen six-fold.
Even here right off the coast of southern California, Algalita has previously found plastic debris at all ocean depths and in amounts sometimes exceeding twice that of zooplankton.
Local attempts in California to ban the dispensing of throw-away plastic bags began to multiply after the plastic industry successfully lobbied the state legislature in 2006 to pass a law that specifically prohibited cities or counties from imposing fees on plastic bags while supposedly encouraging plastic bag recycling by mandating that stores install plastic bag recycling bins for customers to bring back their used bags (AB2447).
Environmental groups, like the Surfrider Foundation and Costa Mesa-based Earth Resource Foundation, had generally favored the bag fee approach as a way to motivate shoppers to get in the habit of bringing their own reusable bags. The prohibition against fees on plastic bags remains in effect until 2013.
An attempt to enact instead a state-wide ban on plastic carryout bags failed just last September when the California Senate voted down a bill already passed by the Assembly (AB 1998). The bill also included a requirement that shoppers be charged for paper carryout bags. Then Governor Schwarzenegger had signaled he would have signed it.
Had California passed the ban, it would have been the first state-wide one in the nation.
San Francisco became the first California city, in 2007, to enact a plastic bag ban, followed soon after by Palo Alto and Oakland. Besides Long Beach and Manhattan Beach, the other southern California jurisdictions which have adopted bans are Calabasas, Malibu, Santa Monica and the County of Los Angeles.
These bans generally zero in on just plastic carryouts with handles, not the plastic bags implemented in-store for containing produce or meats.
Opponents of local bag bans point out that they create a confusing patchwork of conflicting regulations that can catch shoppers off-guard if they venture outside their city limits.
Concern is also voiced that people of limited income would have difficulty affording either the purchase of reusable bags or paying a per bag fee for paper ones. The proposal being introduced in HB addresses this concern head-on by commitments already obtained from the Surfrider Foundation and Rainbow Disposal to donate reusable bags.
Reusable bags are being sold at supermarkets and large retailers almost everywhere for as little as 99 cents.
Environmental groups that had their hopes recently dashed for a state-wide plastic bag ban are experiencing renewed optimism that many cities will be emboldened to pursue local bans now that the onus of providing a costly environmental impact study has been lifted.
If HB does establish its own ban, it would be the first in both Orange and San Diego Counties.
Boogie Green 
If marine species suffer this kind of traumatic and deadly dilemma, it’s not the plastic alone, but the people who does not consider proper waste management. We can ban plastic bags, but it’s inevitable, plastic materials will be doubled every year and irresponsible people will continue to destroy the environment. So what we do is to begin with ourselves. Be educated and learn the right way of disposing wastes such as plastics and learn how to reuse or recycle them for other good purposes.
It’s fantastic that plastic bag bans are finally being put in place. Plastic bags are entirely unnecessary (see my website for landfill photos!). Unfortunately, consumers are generally not motivated to remember reusable bags when the more convenient options exists.
Currently I am studying at the University of Guelph, however, I am from a Northern Ontario city with 8000 people. A plastic bag ban which I suggested to the city council was met with much opposition. It quickly escalated into a 2 year campaign called One Less Plastic Bag. During this time, I was contacted by the Canadian Plastics Industry Association (CPIA) and they disputed the claims which I was presenting from the Algalita Research Foundation. The CPIA stopped communicating with me when they didn’t like my suggestion to carry on the conversation in my local newspaper.
Eventually I received proof that over half of my city’s retailers supported the idea of a ban, the rest of the retailers cautiously said maybe, and none refused. The council still disapproved. On a positive note though, community members were definitely becoming more aware and were making an effort to change their habits.
A neighbouring community became very interested and got as far as passing the bylaw (the first in Ontario) but as soon as the law was being phased-in, the newly elected council simply and quickly dismissed it (I later found out that each council member was contacted by the CPIA and were good targets having not been part of the 1 year lead-in to the ban).
…
The issue of plastics bags and waste reduction remains my passion and in taking a course at the University of Guelph called, “Sustainable Communities,” I have the opportunity to advocate for sustainability in a group project! We have released an e-book called, “7 Billion People are Consuming the Planet.”
In a world with so many issues, taking action can often feel overwhelming, so ultimately, the book focuses on practical solutions to empower the reader.
The book is available at: http://www.onelessplasticbag.ca/book
Sincerely,
Michelle
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