Kerry JacksonEditor’s note: This has been excerpted with permission from the Pacific Research Institute. To read the entire post, click here.
Plastic bags have been a target of California lawmakers for more than a decade. Sacramento is unlikely to rest until it has eliminated them entirely from the state – but not before it can shake down the bag makers for a few million.
Attorney General Rob Bonta announced on Oct. 17 that four manufacturers and the state had reached a settlement that will require them to pay more than $1.7 million for allegedly violating a 2014 law that requires carry-out plastic bags in grocers and other retailers to be recyclable. They have also agreed to stop selling plastic bags in the state. Bonta is suing three other companies that declined to settle. He says all the companies have made “misleading” and deceptive claims about their products’ recyclability.
The law is Senate Bill 270. It requires reusable grocery bags handed to customers at the point of sale to meet a number of conditions, among them “shall be recyclable in this state, and accepted for return at stores subject to the at-store recycling program.”
The grounds for banning plastic bags haven’t changed over the years. They enter the litter stream when they are inappropriately discarded, end up in landfills or are incinerated when they are.
The first is of course unacceptable. That’s why we have anti-littering laws. But there’s no tragedy in disposing of plastic bags in landfills. Yes, plastic doesn’t decompose as organic matter does. But it does break down “into microplastics which have been found in drinking water, food and the air we breathe.”
A couple of points:
One, burying plastic bags in landfills is not an environmental spoiler.
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Everything I’ve read (in health mags and Emails) and seen on podcasts (on health) tells of the ubiquity of microplastics in our environment-and concludes : Microplastics when it enters the bloodstream-from the air or from food or water, is very hard to get out the body and it is contributes to our dying earlier (of cancer, heart disease, stroke etc) than we would otherwise, and lessens our enjoyment (esp. in older ages, with issues of joint pain and balance) of the life we live before we die.
I don’t know why Pacific Foundation doesn’t address this problem. I almost seems like it is deliberately hiding this info in order to make its point.
I’m as Conservative as anyone. But I also am Libertarianish-which means I think before I come to a conclusion-or at least I try to read differing arguments on, say, microplastics in the human body.
No, I don’t believe a tax on plastic bags is a good idea; the way to eliminate the perceived threat is by the dissemination of information on the threat-not taking away the consumers right to buy what he/she wants.
I’m old enough to remember when California politicians insisted on plastic bags because using paper bags was “destroying the forests.”
I find it amusing that the state of plastic surgery (California) is against plastic for the public. Probably because the plastic surgeons need more plastic for the plastic politicians and plastic Hollywood starlets!.
We find it amusing that CA lawmakers ban plastic straws and bags yet have to public media posts and maps to avoid human waste in the streets and sidewalks along with used drug needles! The entire west coast is nuts. Ban lead bullets to save the Condors and birds of prey then champion wind turbines that chop them up like blenders! Kill half a million of one species to “save” another that doesn’t need it. Let millions of acres of timber sand forest habitat burn annually to “save \” a minnow!
California us run by Idiots(Liberal Democrats and Governor Nuisance should go live in a tent
The government’s main job is to protect the people from threats to health, ignorance, and extreme poverty. California is one government doing its job when it starts to protect us from pollution such as microplastics. Most governments that don’t protect against pollution are corrupt- the politicians are paid off by private interests that never learned how to not leave messes everywhere they go, and don’t want to pay damages. Treat other people as you would like to be treated. Don’t poison them.
California mandated plastic bags 10 times the thickness of the old ones. How does that work to reduce micro plastics? California endorses plastic egg cartons, milk cartons, water bottles by the billions, on and on and on. Don’t try to sell California as a rational greenie state. It’s a sham. The whole government.