WATCH: The Scourge of Plastic Bags: Save the Bay Campaign
|
Tweet this story! Support our efforts for a sustainable world.
|
|
I was contacted last week by a woman who was seeking the help of the green blogging army to spread the word about a new campaign in the San Francisco Bay Area to raise awareness about the harmful effects of plastic shopping bags. The campaign is called Save the Bay, and they’ve produced a brief movie called The Bay vs. The Bag, which I’ve posted below.
Now, it won’t surprise anyone here that disposable shopping bags (or anything “disposable”) is an environmental catastrophe. (Why we ever thought that “disposable” was possible, I’ll never know.) But what might surprise you is the sheer number of bags that end up in in SF Bay.
Here are some quick facts:
- 1.37 million plastic bags were picked up by volunteers during the Ocean Conservancy’s 2008 International Coastal Cleanup Day, second only in number to cigarette butts.
- Californians use approximately 19 billion plastic bags and 5 billion paper bags annually. Average use time of a plastic bag is 12 minutes! (Think: store…car…house…trash.)
- Bay Area residents use 3.8 billion plastic bags every year. It is estimated that one million end up in the Bay each year.
I applaud this latest anti-plastic bag campaign because it is NOT a reduction or recycling campaign. It is campaign to impose a fee for using (or a ban on using) these frakking bags.
Save the Bay’s goals:
Bag litter can be prevented by implementing fee or ban policy.
- San Jose and many other California cities are analyzing the feasibility of issuing a 25 cent fee on single-use plastic and paper bags at major retail stores. In addition, two bills (AB 68 and AB 2449) that would require a 25 cent fee on single-use bags have been introduced in the California legislature.
- In Ireland, a 33 cent fee on plastic bags reduced their use by 90 percent and reduced plastic bag litter by 93 percent in one year.
- Community input meetings in San Jose have shown the majority of residents support a single-use bag fee ordinance.
In order to be effective at changing consumer habits, fees and bans must:
- Ensure a switch to reusable cloth bags by placing a fee, ban or combination on both plastic and paper single-use bags.
- Provide consistency through broad coverage across all retail outlets, not just large groceries and pharmacies.
- Bring local partners and stakeholders into the policy process and discuss the advantages and cost savings to businesses and the community.
- Include a funding plan for publicity, enforcement and administrative activities.
- Fee revenue can be used to recoup administration costs for municipalities and retailers, subsidize bags for low-income residents and clean up litter hot spots.
