Plastic bag ban fizzles again in California amid heavy industry lobbying. What do you think?

Another effort in California to ban plastic bags failed in the Legislature late Tuesday night.

That measure, AB 1998, passed the Assembly in June and had the support of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger but faced a withering and well-financed advertising and lobbying campaign from the plastic bag manufacturing industry.

California would have been the first state in the nation to have a full ban on plastic bags, a goal some environmentalists have been pushing for years.

"I think we missed a great opportunity," said the measure's author, Julia Brownley (D- Santa Monica), as the bill failed another Senate vote just before 11 p.m.

What do you think? Share your views below.

Photo credit: Los Angeles Times

Comments

[MisterEd]

The legislature has far bigger things to deal with. Start with the budget. Then move on to coming up with ways to help business growth (JOBS!) and redefine public pensions. We don't have a budget and they're talking plastic bags.

[michelle]

Why do people want to hold on to these bags? Buy a canvas bag and use that to fill and refill, fill and refill. You use the plastic ones because they're free with your groceries? Well there is a cost and the cost is the pollution they cause. Doesn't effect you? Yes it does and your children and their children. Just because someone manufactures them and they don't want stop making money doesn't make them important to our lives. In europe, when you buy groceries you have to buy the bag or bring your own. Its simple and there aren't lobbyist out there spending money on whats not for the greater good.

[LA Ray]

The plastic bags are not the problem, it's the people that don't dispose of them properly.

[Emilia]

If Mexico City can ban plastic bags why can't California? Once again money over the environment. I agree with this post: Once again, money beats logic as the initiative fails because of lobbying.

[Kelly5]

Of course California should ban the use of the plastic bag for carrying items purchased in stores. By prohibiting the use of the bag a change in behavior will be forced upon people and this is a good thing. There is no reason in the world, considering that most people have two good hands to use to pick up and carry things, that we cannot carry a few items loose to our cars or, alternatively, carry a fabric reusable bag with us at all times. I carry two in my purse. They roll up and are compact, measuring about 1.25 by 3 inches. When I am at the register, I pull them out of my purse and unroll them and, voila, I or the bag gal or guy can fill them up with my purchases.

This issue is fizzling perhaps because the negative consequences of plastic-bag use have not been brought home to people. We need more graphic images, like the one accompanying today's L.A. times story, to demonstrate the true cost of this wasteful use of a petroleum-based product.

The fact that members of our state legislature caved in to pressure from plastic-bag industry lobbyists is no surprise. We are living in an era in which politicians leap to replace reason, prudence, foresight, and wisdom with capitalist greed and fear of the moneyed interests.

As I often say, if homo sapiens make it as a species, in three hundred years or so our descendents will look back on this era as a time of primitive and barbaric economic and cultural practices.

What gets my goat is that we have the materials (fabric bags and the means to manufacture and distribute them) to provide a more eco-friendly alternative to plastic bags, but the state legislators do not have the political spine to stand for a progressive and wise course of action. What do they stand for?

It just goes to show you that making a transformative change has nothing to do at all with physical reality and the availability of knowledge but rather everything to do with the hidden values that people hold. Our legislators value the power that corporations can wield more than anything else.

P.S. While recycling and reusing plastic bags are honorable practices, they are not the end-game solution but rather an intermediary step. Our entire waste stream needs to be redesigned and retooled to reduce the production of waste until we arrive at the day when there is almost no waste. Think cradle to cradle instead of cradle to grave. It can be done. The technology exists. Just not the political and cultural will.

[kgoddess]

Frankly, who cares?? he idiots in Sacramento FAILED TO PASS A BUDGET!

[Hypatia]

Make the blasted bags biodegradable! My dog's poop bags are!

[BagsBagsBags]

For all of those who defend plastic bags, please post your addresses here. That way those of us who do not use them can provide you with all of the unrecycled bags (you claim are recycled) that we find trashing the environment. By doing so, we can recycle the bags by giving them to you and you in turn will have plenty of bags as well as pthalates and other toxic chemicals to reuse all you want.

[Cosmo Kramer]

People........take the government out of the problem and reduce the use of plastic bags all together.

Next time you go shopping and they ask you "paper or plastic"............tell them "NO THANKS..........I BROUGHT MY OWN BAGS"!!!!

PROBLEM SOLVED.

[Cosmo Kramer]

Oh, it also takes the power of the lobbyists and special interest groups away from them.

[Cosmo Kramer]

Oh, it also takes the power of the lobbyists and special interest groups away from them.

[Joe D]

It is truly amazing our goverment has wasted time on an issue that does not create jobs or solves our budget issues or improves the enviroment.

This bill is nothing but a waste of time and resources since when does goverment tell us how we transprot our grocery? What is next what jeans we where becuase they feel it is bad for the enviroment with out studying scientific facts.

What product will be banned next to end more manufacturing jobs and import instead. We the people need to step up and hold Goverment accountable for there action like no budget over paid and miss management of funds.

[Tasha Orshoff]

I can't believe it didn't pass. I just got back from the store where the person in front of me got 5 plastic bags for $19 worth of groceries. It's ridiculous! Why can people use their own bags? How hard is it to keep them in your car and carry them into the store? I don't care about jobs, I care about the earth. It seems like we are just trying to make our world into one big ball of plastic! I am going to try and figure out how I can fight to get rid of plastic grocery bags!

[Sean]

There is much more going on here than meets the eyes. Many strong environmentalists voted against this bill. This should show that something is inherently wrong with it and should not have passed. I really hate single use plastics, especially those that don't decompose readily but somebody can try another bill next year but please, for crying out loud, don't submit new bills right at the end of the legislative session!

[Bill]

I always ask for paper. Hate plastic, not only for its effect on the environment, but also it just doesn't keep heavier groceries upright like paper does.

[Cyclops]

Some of you clowns act as if people *purposely* allow their bags to enter the ocean and kill marine life. That couldn't be farther from the truth.

Ever seen what a gust of wind can do? I guess when the wind picks up and sends plastic bags 50 feet into the air, we're supposed to jump in our Prius and follow them around the neighborhood until the wind dies down so we can catch them.

Give me a break!

[Joe D]

For the comment of Ireland bag use being lower , can liners bags sales went up 500% I wounder why?

[Mrwatchy]

1. Plastic bags don't decompose> "FALSE It takes from 400-800 days and they turn to particles small enough for bacteria to eat. Tie one to a fence and keep a weekly log. Very simple." Or very weird--we're trying to keep t-shirt bags off fences. What happens to the particles during the two years before they become bacteria food? Is there a post-it on them saying, "For Bacteria Only?" Two years is plenty of time for macroscopic creatures to mistake flecks of plastic for food. How can shawn200000 guarantee that the conditions for those rare microbes will be perfect for eating the billions of tons of plastic we produce every year? He can't. It's a straw-man argument. It's easier to reduce plastic usage.

"6% of bags are recycled> TRUE 6.3 percent recycled plus 80% reused as household trash bags at 6 grams each. When Ireland banned shopping bags, . . . Total bag production by weight was up 200% the first year and 400% the 3rd year." The only source for this shocking statistic is the "Carrier Bag Association" which serves the plastic industry in Europe. Similar associations, actually PR campaigns, were set up by the ACC and bag manufacturers in the US to misdirect lawmakers and apparently, shawn200000.

"3. Wash your reusable bag occasionally, whats the problem?> If every family had 6-10 resuable bags to wash, water resources in California could not keep up. You can't wash them with clothes loads because of the E-Coli, Salmonella, Listeria and related bacteria . . ." Almost like washing an extra pair of underpants every couple weeks? Yep that would bring down the system, you betcha. This is just raving. How many ER cases of bag-related E-Coli, Salmonella, and Listeria poisoning can we donument? Even if you found an isolated case it can't compare to the massive gyres in every ocean and many other issues related to petro-plastic bags.

"Polyethylene bags are chemically inert. No BPA, No leaching chemicals." One then is to believe there is no problem with the inks used to print on them, nor the petroleum used to make them (12 million barrels per year) nor is ANY PART of the manufacturing process even remotely toxic(??) shawn200000 should explain the inertness concept to sea birds when they're dead of starvation because their gullets are stuffed with plastic. You could argue a hangman's noose is chemically inert.

"5. The ocean garbage patch does not contain shopping bags." This is the foaming rant of a true believer, unhinged from reality. In another life shawn200000 could have lobbied for the cigarette industry or worked for BP's safety team.

[Karen]

Hey scout09: Drive thru the desert. The poor cactus spines are COVERED with plastic bags. And anthony: ABSOLUTELY!!! Does a job only count if it wrecks the environment?

[Owen Thal]

Bottom Line:

Will this save us (California and myself) money? If not, then stop wasting time debating this issues and get back to the budget.

[baggervance]

It's strange. I drive a lot throughout the SoCal area. I've VERY seldom seen this kind of plastic bag litter. Maybe in the seedier areas of LA but pretty much not anywhere else. Seems to me the Marxist environmental movement and has lost yet another battle against EVIL capitalism. As others have said: Work on the budget. Cut taxes. Cut the environmental crap putting a strangle hold on the economy. And for God's sake, stop trying to pass bills like the Feds that just put more uncertainty in the markets. Morons. Ah shoot! I thought I'd make it though without name-calling. Morons. Oops! Sorry!

[Crimes]

They asked, "what do you think". Well here you go.
I think all the Liberal environmental freaks, should all move to a beautiful ranch in the Arcada, Eureka or Napa Valley countryside. There they can live without, plastic bags, fireplaces, cars, fossil fuels and genetically enhanced foods of any kind. By doing this, they can leave the rest of us alone. We would never have to read another story in the crazy L.A. Times on this matter. Take the Anti gun people with you too. Let the rest of us live in peace.

[linda konrad]

can't believe it didn't pass, it's up to us to ask our cities to pass their own laws

[Michael]

Now get back to passing a budget.....

[Crimes]

ZKWC: Your a moron! I am an avid SCUBA Diver. Guess what in all the clean up dives I have done in Catalina, Newprot, Balboa, Huntington Beach La Jolla, I have never once picked up a plastic trash bag. Lots of Beer bottles, cans, plastic cups, but never found a plastic trash bag. Maybe it's an epidemic in the Filthy county of Los Angeles. I reuse the bags until they fall apart. Then I dispose of them properly. Gotta be L.A.