Plastic Bags in the Crosshairs

The California Senate is supposed to vote today on a landmark bill banning the use of plastic bags by retailers across the state.

The bill calls for grocery shops, convenience retailers and drugstores to stop using plastic bags at the checkout. In their place, retailers would be required to offer paper bags made of at least 40 percent recycled material for 5 cents a pop. Of course, customers using their own re-usable tote bags wouldn't have to pay a dime.

The Assembly passed the bill in June. But while Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger supports it as a victory for the environment, there are those — the American Chemistry Council, for one — who vehemently oppose it saying that it will cost the state jobs, hurt the economy and also potentially put the kibosh on existing plastic bag recycling programs.

Wade Crowfoot, a senior analyst for the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and who was an aide to San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom when the city became the nation's first to ban plastic bags in 2007, told the Christian Science Monitor that the sky-is-falling predictions by opponents over cost and inconvenience never materialized.

"There were minimal complaints once this got going," Crowfoot told the Monitor.

CNN reports that according to the Environmental Protection Agency, 3.96 million tons of plastic bags, sacks and wraps were generated in 2008 in the US. Meanwhile, only 830,000 tons of plastic and paper bags was recycled that year, and a combined total of 4.3 million tons ended up in landfills and the world's oceans where they threaten marine life.

If passed, California will become the first state to ban plastic bags, but cities (such as San Francisco) and towns in the state and across the country have introduced similar measures. Seattle, Dallas, Austin, Texas and Portland, Ore., among others, have all considered the environmental impact of plastic bag distribution. North Carolina has banned plastic bags on its Outer Banks.

According to CNN, there's a global war on plastic bags currently underway. Several cities in China, Africa, Australia, India and Ireland have all imposed bans or surcharges on plastic bags, and the United Nations has even called for a worldwide ban.

Photo by polandeze via Flickr.