California Single Use Bag Ban

[Alpha8472]

Voters approved the single use plastic bag ban in California and it took effect immediately. It hit everyone without warning. Now grocery stores, pharmacies, convenience stores, stores that sell food, and liquor stores will have to sell paper bags or reusable plastic bags for 10 cents. There were already bag bans in some cities and counties, but around half of the state still had the luxury of single use plastic bags. Restaurants are not included.

The sad part is that many stores now sell 10 cent reusable plastic bags which look just like the old plastic bags but are even thicker. This makes the environmental impact even worse. Instead of a thin plastic bag, now thicker plastic bags will be the garbage in the streets. This is really awful.

I lived in a city that banned bags a while ago, and I am used to the hassle. Most people just fill their carts with groceries and refuse to pay for bags. Other people simply walk out with their arms loaded with groceries.

There might be a benefit in the bag ban as supposedly fewer bags will be blowing in the wind. However, you just see thicker plastic bags lying on the sidewalks now. There are some stores that use paper bags, but I see more stores using the thick plastic bags. Was this supposed to reduce our dependence on foreign oil? Plastic bags are made from oil. If we switched to paper bags, it might have helped. However, the oil industry is making even more money now by selling even thicker plastic bags that require more oil to make. Customers are now paying for their bags, when in the past it was free.

[veteran+]

Voters approved the single use plastic bag ban in California and it took effect immediately. It hit everyone without warning. Now grocery stores, pharmacies, convenience stores, stores that sell food, and liquor stores will have to sell paper bags or reusable plastic bags for 10 cents. There were already bag bans in some cities and counties, but around half of the state still had the luxury of single use plastic bags. Restaurants are not included.

The sad part is that many stores now sell 10 cent reusable plastic bags which look just like the old plastic bags but are even thicker. This makes the environmental impact even worse. Instead of a thin plastic bag, now thicker plastic bags will be the garbage in the streets. This is really awful.

I lived in a city that banned bags a while ago, and I am used to the hassle. Most people just fill their carts with groceries and refuse to pay for bags. Other people simply walk out with their arms loaded with groceries.

There might be a benefit in the bag ban as supposedly fewer bags will be blowing in the wind. However, you just see thicker plastic bags lying on the sidewalks now. There are some stores that use paper bags, but I see more stores using the thick plastic bags. Was this supposed to reduce our dependence on foreign oil? Plastic bags are made from oil. If we switched to paper bags, it might have helped. However, the oil industry is making even more money now by selling even thicker plastic bags that require more oil to make. Customers are now paying for their bags, when in the past it was free.

Sorry to hear you have not had a good experience with this.

I have lived in a few areas with this scenario and it has worked very well on all accounts for a substantial number of people and for the environment.

It took some getting used to but the change worked out very well. I do wish in all cases that the price of the bags paid would go directly to environmental causes.

[BillyGr]

What always seems odd with these is that they charge for the paper bags.
After all, before plastic bags were around all the stores used paper ones with no charge - why not just return to that option?
The thought being, of course, that the paper bags are much easier to get rid of, reuse and recycle, not to mention being made of an item that can be fairly easily reproduced, so they don't present the same issues as plastic does.

[J-Man]

I believe the point of charging for ANY bag (paper or plastic) is to give people an incentive to use reusable bags that they bring in. Many stores (Sprouts and Target, for example) have been giving credit (usually 5 cents per bag) to shoppers who brought in their own bags for several years now--even in areas where there was no plastic bag ban.

[storewanderer]

I too refuse to pay the 10+ cent charge for bags (in places like San Mateo, CA it is 25 cents) because I feel it is poor form and poor service for a store to profit for bags (I've paid 5 cent charges in some places though, knowing that just about covers the cost of the bag). Since most of the major grocers in California (except Save Mart) lobbied hard and contributed a lot of money to get this ban and 10 cent charge in place, I see their position and see their profit motive in this so I will not pay them for bags. I will do without the bags to satisfy the environmentalists and carry items in my hands or take them out in a cart. I hope the plastic bags which make 0.5% of the total waste stream in the US somehow help their cause but I do not really understand why they decided to target something that makes up less than 0.5% of the total waste stream? Since that 0.5% number includes things like trash bags, produce bags, bread bags, etc. that are not banned, the net effect of this ban is going to be even less than that. So really what was accomplished by banning the plastic bags?

For me, plastic bags have always been saved after going to the store and used for household trash, pet clean up, yard work, and other things. For some of these things, you can use a paper bag, but plastic works best.

And now you sell paper bags or very thick plastic bags which I believe creates a scenario where the fewer customers who pay for bags but those paying are getting much thicker bags, which I suspect may create a larger waste stream than the old method of giving everyone the thin flimsy bags.

I have also observed the lack of bags hinders efficiency at the stores. The plastic bags were designed for efficiency but now where you have many customers not taking bags and having to stand there for a while after the transaction to handle each item to get it off the counter, or customers having to hand over reusable bags which take some seconds for the cashier to get ready, or having to wait until a transaction is fully bagged to "count how many bags then complete it," it is creating a delay in the checkout process in almost every case. This is where I think the grocers are going to find this bag ban is a loser. It is ironic that Safeway/Albertsons, the chain with the worst checkout situation, contributed so much money to support this ban. It is another example of their not caring about the customer's time. But in the end I believe this policy will be a loser for the grocers too. It doesn't matter much if customers linger around at a self checkout but when customers are lingering around in your checkout lane in California with a union cashier making $18/hr suddenly those seconds start to count and start to cost more.

Reusable bags are disgusting and I remember from my time working in retail the filthy, smelly, odd substances I would find on those bags. I will NEVER use reusable bags for groceries (sometimes good to use them to carry coats or empty water bottles into airports though) and believe they are very unsanitary. Sure, you could wash them between trips to the store. Maybe have one or two reusable bags that are special for the fruits, meats, deli items, etc. that cause the filth and odor issues and just wash those. But do you really want that in the same wash load as your clothes? Oh, you are doing a separate load? What is the environmental impact of that? The waste of water, the use of the laundry detergent chemicals, etc. The 32 load detergent that costs $5 on sale well that detergent for the special "reusable bag wash load" adds up, not to mention the water.

Of course, this would not have ever been an issue in the first place had people properly disposed of plastic bags. The excessive plastic bag litter noted in certain places was one of the big reasons the bans were initially implemented in places like San Francisco and Los Angeles. Sure, there is little to no litter in most places, it is just a big city problem, but now it gets to be everyone else's problem that people in the big cities were too lazy to toss their bags into a trash can or recycling bin.

Then there is the issue of reports of increased theft with these bag bans for a variety of reasons... I won't even go there.

[submariner]

Reusable bags are disgusting and I remember from my time working in retail the filthy, smelly, odd substances I would find on those bags. I will NEVER use reusable bags for groceries (sometimes good to use them to carry coats or empty water bottles into airports though) and believe they are very unsanitary.

That's why I like my canvas bags from Fresh & Easy... toss them in the laundry every so often and they're good as new!

[storewanderer]

The canvas bags have the same sanitation issue and I question the environmental impact of having to wash them. I used to use one of those in lieu of a backpack during college to carry books around campus. They definitely last forever with washing, that is true.

Funny situation with this: http://www.sacbee.com/news/business/art ... 63898.html

I also wonder what happened in the cities that banned plastic bags but did not write a "paper bag fee" into their ordinance. South Lake Tahoe (where Raleys had imposed a 5 cent charge on large paper bags no charge on small or medium and where Safeway had imposed a 10 cent charge on all paper bags but wasn't charging it consistently or for "locals" if you went to a full service register), Grass Valley (where neither Raleys nor Safeway charged extra for bags), Manhattan Beach, and I thought a few other cities had plastic bag bans in place but no fee mandatory on the paper bags.

South Lake Tahoe's ban was also interesting as it did not apply to drug stores (so Rite Aid kept giving out plastic bags; so did Kmart; while CVS switched to paper but wasn't charging extra) or other retailers, only to grocery stores.

Also since this is so much about the environment, can cities now go back and ban these super thick plastic bags that retailers are currently selling that are supposedly reusable 125 times since the entire point of the ordinance was to stop plastic bag use and all the pollution or whatever else was so bad about them?

[submariner]

The canvas bags have the same sanitation issue and I question the environmental impact of having to wash them.

Washing fixes the sanitation issue. And if you put them in with other laundry (I toss them in with towels and such) the environmental impact is all but nonexistent.

I also wonder what happened in the cities that banned plastic bags but did not write a "paper bag fee" into their ordinance.

My understanding of the law as I read it, this applies to localities that do not already have their own bag ban laws on record (in which case the localities' law would take precedence). The law itself says the store is required to charge a minimum fee of 10¢. That's direct from my voter information guide, still on my desk.

[storewanderer]

I just never quite felt right putting the canvas bag (even the one that was used for books) into the wash with anything else. Between it sitting on the floor in bathrooms, labs, sometimes dragging on the ground going up/down stairs... the rare times I did wash it I ran separate loads for the bag and only the bag. I think a bag that was full of food debris/odor I would be inclined to do the same thing. But the canvas bags are much better, larger, easier to carry, and much stronger than the reusable bag offerings being pushed most in the grocery stores at present.

I am wondering about the availability of a canvas bag that has some kind of an easy to clean material and non-water soaking material inside but is still canvas on the outside (something you would be able to clean the inside of with say some warm water/soap and a paper towel)...

[veteran+]

Reusable bags are disgusting and I remember from my time working in retail the filthy, smelly, odd substances I would find on those bags. I will NEVER use reusable bags for groceries (sometimes good to use them to carry coats or empty water bottles into airports though) and believe they are very unsanitary.

That's why I like my canvas bags from Fresh & Easy... toss them in the laundry every so often and they're good as new!

Exactly!

I have a collection of washable canvas bags from several companies that I got for free. I have not used plastic for years!

I also have some free reusable bags (free during promotions). They have lasted a very long time and funny thing is, there has never been a sanitation issue. I guess I have been lucky to not have any food drippings inside the bags.