State of California: Plastic Bag Recycling…2006 Plastic Bag Ban, 2010
Earlier this week, The California Assembly received full support from the California Grocers Association to pass Bill AB 1998, which if approved by the Senate on Friday, June 4, 2010, would ban all single use plastic and paper carry out bags from supermarkets, retailers, convenience stores, food marts and liquor stores. The ban would require grocers and retailers to replace plastic and most paper bags with reusable bags, such as jute bags or sell paper bags with at least 40 percent recycled content.
However, both reusable and recycled paper bags have environmental implications as they’re much heavier than conventional single use plastic bags, resulting in higher volume and greater transportation impact. This ultimately consumes more energy and releases more greenhouse gases into the environment. Rather than focusing on discouraging the use of single use plastic and paper bags, Bill AB 1998 should address the global issue of reducing all single use packaging waste. Plastic is used in many everyday packaging applications which end up in our environment and landfills.
Just four years ago, the State of California passed Bill AB 2449: The Plastic Bag Recycling Act of 2006. The focus was to address plastic bag waste by encouraging customers to collect and return plastic bags to their local grocery stores and in turn, retailers would provide full service drop-off recycling facilities to collect, transport and recycle all plastic bags. However, in March of 2007, San Francisco was the first city to ban plastic bags due to the costs associated behind recycling.
Tim Shestek, Senior Director of State Affairs from The American Chemistry Council (ACC) issued a statement on June 2, 2010 supporting Bill AB 2449, “Across California, millions of bags and other product wraps are being recycled, thanks to the state’s partnerships with producers and retailers – important work that would stop and would actually result in more waste going to landfills if this bill is enacted. We’re urging lawmakers to rethink their priorities – and defeat Assembly Bill 1998.” View ACC’s Stop the $1Billion Bag Tax statement here.
Plastic is very useful in other practical applications and plastic bags are quite often reused before ending up in recycling facilities or landfills, thus increasing the lifespan of “single use” plastic bags. The availability of biodegradable plastic technology offers a solution to degrade and biodegrade single use plastic in our environment, even in landfills. The issue still remains, we’re all facing the global issue of packaging waste and we should be looking at cost effective environmental solutions to better manage our disposal methods.