Seen on the wire:
City leaders approved a ban on plastic grocery bags after weeks of lobbying on both sides from environmentalists and a supermarket trade group. San Francisco would be the first U.S. city to adopt such a rule if Mayor Gavin Newsom signs the ban as expected.
The law, approved 10-1, requires large markets and drug stores to offer customers bags made of paper that can be recycled, plastic that breaks down easily enough to be made into compost, or reusable cloth.[.]
The 50 grocery stores that would be most affected by the law argued that the ban was not reasonable because plastic bags made of corn byproducts are a relatively new, expensive and untested product. Some said they might offer only paper bags at checkout.
As someone who has paid his dues by taking the bus to the grocery store in college, and by toting groceries home from the neighborhood market when living in a city, I’ve got to say that not having had access to plastic bags would have been a pain. It just seems easier to tote around multiple plastic bags than to lug paper bags around. The annoyance of being limited to paper bags would likely have just provided added incentive to drive to the grocery store, rather than walking or using public transport.
And surely, the last thing San Francisco needs is more driving.
OK, it’s also probably true that paper bags could be redesigned to address the ease-of-carrying issue I mentioned. However, I do wonder if there could have been a less intrusive way to achieve the San Francisco Board of Supervisors’ goals would have been to encourage more recycling of plastic bags, or to incent folks to choose paper over plastic when practical.
For example, my local grocery stores here on the east coast accept plastic bags for recycling. And, being asked to pay a few cents deposit per plastic bag would create an incentive to recycle.