Coming before the Ojai City Council this Tuesday, February 28 is a single-use point-of-sale carryout bag ordinance. At its basis, the ordinance bans plastic bags and places a .10 fee on recycled content paper bags (state law does not allow a fee on plastic bags).  Details at end of this editorial.

It’s Easy Being Bag-Free! 

In 1968, while in Saanen, Switzerland, I went to a local market to pick up some groceries. Much to my surprise, the store did not provide a bag for me to carry the apples, cheese, and chocolate back to the chalet. I purchased a cloth bag on the spot and after that I never again forgot to take my own bag to the store in Europe.

In 2004, while visiting my relatives in Holland, I noticed that Dutch shoppers brought large cardboard boxes to the store. I saw that for larger items or quantities, boxes work even better than canvas bags.

Now it’s 2012. For the last forty-four years I’ve somehow managed to survive and raise two children without taking home extra plastic bags as I go through check-out.

Bill Buchanan, our Ojai Valley New’s publisher suggests in his column (Passing the Buck, 2-10) that instead of a ban we should keep reminding people to remember to bring reusable bags because otherwise, he argues, they will buy heavier grade plastic bag liners for their garbage cans!

For crying out loud! Thousands of sea turtles, whales and other marine mammals die every year from eating discarded plastic bags mistaken for food. That fact alone should motivate us to stop creating more trash to dump our trash in! Surely we can line the bottom of our kitchen cans with a folded newspaper or rinse the can out and dump the water in the garden!

Mr. Buchanan is still fairly new in town so he can be forgiven for not knowing that this plastic bag ban has been kicked around in the last two elections and has been on the city council agenda at least once before.

We have “Please be angel, bring your own bag,” signs at many stores. A few years ago a very articulate student and his classmates came before the council and did a special slide-show presentation explaining why we need a plastic bag ban.

Mr. Buchanan ends his editorial with the worn-out argument that “If it [voluntarily bringing a bag] doesn’t work, the council can always vote to ban bags later on.”

The time for “later on” has come.

Five years ago it was pointed out that a plastic-bag-free City is one more important step towards Ojai becoming a model Sustainable City.

I was at the 2007 city council meeting where the citizens of our valley asked the City to adopt a Plastic Bag Reduction Ordinance. The facts and figures regarding the true cost of plastic bags were already well-documented.

According to the World Watch Institute, Americans throw away around 100 billion plastic bags every year. The estimated cost to retailers is $4 billion.

In case your eyes glazed over that means one million bags a minute are consumed, becoming trash and choking marine mammals!

One plastic bag takes approximately 1,000 years to biodegrade. These discarded bags then make it into our oceans, killing tens of thousands of sea animals, including whales, birds, seals and turtles. The cycle continues even after the animals die, since the bags don’t break down easily and the toxic chemicals are further digested by other animals. The bags, at some point, may even become a part of our own diets.

It takes 12 million barrels of oil to produce the plastic bags Americans use each year. In addition, about 15 million trees are cut down to produce paper for paper bags.

We can help reduce oil consumption and save trees simply by bringing our own bag every trip to the store.

Plastic bags do not biodegrade, they photodegrade—breaking down into smaller and smaller toxic bits contaminating soil and waterways and entering the food web when animals accidentally ingest.

Plastic bags are among the 12 items of debris most often found in coastal cleanups, according to the nonprofit Center for Marine Conservation.

Each sturdy reusable shopping bag we use has the potential to eliminate hundreds, if not thousands, of plastic and paper bags over it’s lifetime.

It’s not hard to remember to store your bags in the car or your bike basket. I even keep one in my purse. Storing the plastic and paper bags you already have on hand immediately in the car rather than stuffing them in a drawer and risk forgetting to bring them when you run to the market, is one of the easiest things you can do for the environment.

In the coming weeks, the Ojai City Council will again be discussing a ban for our local grocers and retailers. It would require these businesses to use recycled paper bags, with no less than 40 percent recycled content and 100 percent recyclable material. Customers would be charged a small fee per bag unless they use their own reusable bags.

The move to charging for a bag helps to remind more people to bring a reusable sack. Stores could also credit customers five cents for each recycled bag used in bagging their groceries.

This law would follow other counties and cities across the country, such as Los Angeles County, Portland, San Francisco and Seattle, that have banned single-use plastic bags.

If you love this Planet, educate yourself and support this ban.

Suza Francina is a former City Council member and mayor of Ojai. 

Published in the Ojai Valley News, February 15, 2012

Note: The Ojai Valley Green Coalition will give a presentation to the city council at its first reading of the ordinance on February 28 at 7:30 p.m. The council is then tentatively slated to vote on the ordinance March 13. We encourage you to attend these meetings and voice your support for the ordinance. At the same time, letters to the editor and online discussions at the Ojai Valley News and Ojai Post help the cause.

City council meetings take place in the Ojai City Hall Council Chambers located at 401 S. Ventura St.

The proposed ordinance drafted by the City of Ojai does not ban plastic. It addresses only “point of sale” single use plastic bags that get handed out seemingly for “free” (there is no such thing as a free bag). Those flimsy cheap plastic bags are not recycled in Ventura County, and if they are filled with dog poo they end up in the trash, which ends up in the landfill. They do not break down and are a source of dioxin and other pollutants that are polluting marine habitats and our food chain. The ordinance is not against plastic, there will still be plenty of plastic bags around. Only the single use ones that are handed out everywhere—time to change our habits and think long term.

Fast Facts About Plastic Bags:

http://www.reuseit.com/learn-more/top-facts/plastic-bag-facts

 

Tagged as: city council, green coalition