BLOG: Why It Is Essential To Ban Single-Use Plastic Bags in California

To see why California must actively address the growing problem of ocean debris, you need venture no further than what I call the Playa Vista Garbage Patch.

To arrive at the garbage patch, wait until a rainy day, climb aboard your bicycle, (skateboard, wagon, or tennis shoes), direct it to the Ballona Creek bike path and head west, toward the ocean. On your left, after you pass the architectural and environmental blight that is the Playa Vista development itself [living, vibrant wetlands are also important ingredients in healthy oceans] just beyond the Lincoln Boulevard bridge, you will find the reason (shown in the picture attached).

If that does not convince you we have a problem, keep going until you hit the beach. There you will find another reason. 

In April 2009, the Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Marine Resources Working Group published the linked paper entitled, “Understanding the Economic Benefits and Costs of Controlling Marine Debris in the APEC Region,” which states on pg. vii that “In 2008, marine debris was estimated to have directly cost the 21 APEC member economies [including the United States] approximately US$ 1.265 billion” and that “6.4 million tonnes of debris reach the world’s oceans each year, and that around eight million items enter the sea every day. Plastics consistently comprise 60 to 80% of total debris recorded. Levels and rates of debris input are increasing despite measures to control the problem.” The paper also states that “Marine debris is an avoidable cost.” If we want to cut city and state budgets, why not begin here with avoidable waste instead of, among other things, laying off teachers?

According to the United Nations, there are now more than 7 billion people on the planet. We are apparently expecting 9 – 10 billion by 2050. What this means is that every habit we human beings adopt is having a larger and larger impact on the planet. If the Los Angeles County Staff Report “An Overview of Carryout Bags in Los Angeles County,” dated August 2007 is correct and the average consumer uses 500-600 plastic bags per year, then California’s 38,000,000 residents can use up to approximately 19 billion plastic bags. Studies referred to on Heal the Bay’s website suggest that only 5% of those are ever recycled and that the rest end up in landfills or on our streets, where they cost our California cities millions to clean up out of storm drains and out of impaired waterways.

As for supposedly recycling them, as noted in this Rolling Stone article, entitled, "The Plastic Bag Wars," plastic bags "are also a nightmare to recycle: The flimsy bags, many thinner than a strand of human hair, gum up the sorting equipment used by most recycling facilities. 'Plastic bags and other thin-film plastic is the number-one enemy of the equipment we use,' says Jeff Murray, vice president of Far West Fibers, the largest recycler in Oregon. 'More than 300,000 plastic bags are removed from our machines every day — and since most of the removal has to be done by hand, that means more than 25 percent of our labor costs involves plastic-bag removal.'"

If you've been noticing reports of the hundreds of sea lion pups washing ashore on Southern California beaches lately (more than 1300 so far), you already know something bad is going on out in our oceans.  There have been many apocalyptic films coming out of Hollywood lately, suggesting the world will end in fire, in ice, or by collision with another planet. This report from the International Programme on the State of the Oceans – a panel of ocean scientists who met at Oxford University a couple summers ago to compare notes – suggests that it may not be so dramatic. They found that our oceans are in “shocking” decline and they warn that ocean life is “at high risk of entering a phase of extinction of marine species unprecedented in human history.” These people are not Jerry Bruckheimer; they are world-class scientists. Since 70% of the oxygen in our atmosphere is generated by ocean-dwelling organisms, you can do the math as to what it is we face. "Reducing the input of pollutants including plastics" is one of the solutions they suggest. Banning plastic bags is not only about saving the fish and sea creatures, it’s also about saving the humans. And we need to be doing much, much more.

On the personal level, most people don't realize that they currently pay at least twice for plastic bags. The first cost they pay, according to page 36 of the L.A. County Staff report, is $18 per year to use plastic bags, a cost that is embedded by the stores in the cost of their groceries. The second cost people pay is included in their taxes to help clean up plastic bag blight from neighborhoods and storm drains, which is estimated to total $25 million dollars in California, $25 million dollars which could be much better spent on our schools, on job-creation programs, etc. Reusable bags, by comparison, are available at a one-time cost, some for less than $1 each. Even six to ten bags, for larger families, will still cost far less than $18.

The plastic people keep lying about reusable bags, too.  I'm so bored of their tactics, I'm going to refer you to a blog by Mark Gold, former President of Heal the Bay, Consumer Reports (who calls their claims "baloney,") and epidemiologist and Health Officer for San Francisco Tomás Arágon to answer their ridiculousness.  If any of it were true, we would have heard about big problems in China, which banned plastic bags in the whole country years ago.

For another example, representatives of the plastics industry dispute plastic bags having an affect on turtles, saying: “We have been unable to find another photograph of a turtle eating a plastic bag anywhere on the Internet.”  Another lie.  This detailed field report details the effects of plastic debris on these endangered turtles.

Don’t take my word for any of this. I encourage you to walk along Ballona Creek to the beach yourself.  Canoe down the LA River (see attached photo). Take a ferry ride out to Catalina Island, as I do occasionally. You will likely see what I saw, balloons, soccer balls, and, yes, plastic bags, floating in the ocean, lurking there in the waves, waiting to choke the life out of something.  In the meantime, please support the California plastic bag ban bill introduced by State Senator Alex Padilla, support your local plastic bag bans, and ignore the massive PR onslaught the plastic people will be inflicting upon us over the next several months.     

California’s proposed ban on single-use plastic bags may be a small drop in a giant ocean of problems that seem insurmountable and overwhelming, but it is an effective step we can take together as a concerned community.  And plastic bag bans are effective policy.  Otherwise, why would over 70 cities in California have already banned them?  LA County reported the overwhelming success of its plastic bag ban in July 2012: "As we approach the one year anniversary of the ordinance at large stores, we are pleased to announce the Ordinance has so far resulted in a 95% reduction in overall single use bag usage (both plastic and paper), which includes eliminating all single use plastic bags and a significant reduction of over 30% in paper bag usage."  

Every time I use my reusable canvas bags I feel good that I’m doing my small part to ensure that my grandchildren’s grandchildren will have a healthy planet on which to live.