Paper or Canvas?
Berkeley to Vote on Plastic Bag Ban
By Madeleine Foote
Grocery store baggers may be asking a new question to Berkeley residents and visitors. This March, an ordinance aimed at ending the use of single-use bags in favor of reusable
ones will be presented to the Berkeley City Council. The ordinance bans the use of plastic bags
at checkout counters, imposes a 15 cent fee on paper bags, and requires all paper bags to be made
from at least 40% post consumer recycled paper.
As eco-minded as Bay Area residents are, they still use 3.8 billion plastic bags every year, with about 1 million of those ending up in the Bay itself. The environmental impacts of these plastic bags are enormous: they require huge amounts of oil to produce, never biodegrade, break into small pieces that contribute to the deaths of marine animals through ingestion and entanglement, and introduce highly concentrated toxins into the food web. Although some may argue that plastic bags can be recycled into plastic lumber, (which itself cannot be recycled), very few are actually returned to the grocery store. That means that despite recycling efforts, the enormous amount of resources needed to make new plastic checkout bags remains constant.
Berkeley's battle with plastic bags is part of a struggle that more and more cities
everywhere are seeing as essential to stopping the havoc that plastics are wreaking on
our health and environment. After San Francisco banned plastic bags in 2007, cities like
Oakland, Berkeley, and Fairfax started working on their own bans. Oakland and Fairfax were
quickly sued by pro-plastic interest groups on the basis that they neglected to do an environmental
impact report on what might result in an increased use of paper bags. Oakland was forced to repeal
its ban, while Fairfax put the ban to the voters, who overwhelmingly passed it. Save the Plastic
Bag Coalition, a collaboration of plastic bag manufacturers, retailers, and distributors, including
California-based companies like Elkay Plastics, Command Packaging, and Crown Poly Inc., has become
the dominant fighter of plastic bag bans, and continues to bring suit against any city who attempts
to pass a ban.
By adding the tax on paper bags, Berkeley is promoting reusable bags, not the use of paper
bags instead of plastic, and is therefore hoping to prevent a lawsuit. Nashua Kalil, Chair of
Berkeley's Zero Waste Commission, has been working on this ban since the beginning. She states
that Berkeley is committed to the ordinance and is ready to defend it. Kalil also says that they
are extremely proud of the care, detail, and work that have gone into the ordinance, including many
surveys of local residents and business owners.
The ordinance is intended to serve as a model for other cities, and there is talk of doing a statewide environmental impact report on single-use plastic and paper bags so that individual cities will no longer have to bear this large financial burden and can proceed with their own bans. We here at The Watershed Project support every attempt to stop the flow of plastic, especially plastic bags, into our waterways.
Find out ten easy ways to reduce your plastic footprint.
