Enviro Grift: California Lawmakers Pass Ban on ‘Reusable’ Plastic Grocery Bags

After forcing California grocery shoppers into “reusable” plastic bags at .10 cents a piece, flighty lawmakers have voted to ban them outright. California lawmakers have voted to do away with reusable plastic bags – again.

Assembly Bill 2236 and Senate Bill 1053, authored by Assemblywoman Rebecca Bauer-Kahan (D-Orinda) and Senator Catherine Blakespear (D-Encinitas), proposed to ban any kind of plastic bag at food stores and convenience stores. Both bills are an expansion of SB 270, a 2014 bill that was approved of by voters in 2016 as Proposition 67, which banned all “one time use” plastic bags, and only allowed thicker plastic bags to be purchased in stores.

Now those thicker bags are banned if Gov. Gavin Newsom signs the bills.

Together, both bills would order stores to solely use paper alternate bags, despite laws made decades concerned about “deforestation.”

Note to self: products made from trees are made of a 100% renewable resource.

Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. We hear this daily and see those orders nearly everywhere. Paper or plastic? Separate out your wet garbage and put it in another recyclable food bin. Separate bottles and cans. Compost. Rinse. Repeat.

Yet none of this has reduced landfills.

And don’t lawmakers Bauer-Kahan and Blakespear have more important issues they should be addressing instead of pretending to care about plastic bags: Escalating crime, a growing drug-addicted homeless population, increasing energy costs, energy shortages, failing public schools, pro-Palestine protesters on college campuses threatening Jewish students… oh, and a $55 billion to a $80 billion budget deficit?

“If you have been paying attention – if you read the news at all in recent years – you know we are choking our planet with plastic waste,” said Senator Blakespear at a press conference earlier this year.

CalRecycle reports legislation signed by Gov. Newsom requires all packaging be recyclable or compostable by 2032, with 65% of it recycled by 2032, shifting the burden from the consumer to the packaging producer. Expect prices to go up – again.

And now comes more legislation to ban plastic bags. But banning plastic grocery bags does not reduce disposal and recycling costs, studies over the last 9 years have shown.

The Globe reported in May:

Both lawmakers claim plastic bags are still causing environmental damage, and that a total ban is the only way to stop it. Some coastal cleanup surveys also found that volunteers have collected over 300,000 plastic grocery bags in the last three decades.

Only there are no links to those supposed studies. They also still claim many people dispose of plastic bags after just one or a few uses. Yet most people tell you they use plastic bags multiple times, for myriad uses – especially after being forced to pay for them.

A report from Ocean Conservancy claims many people dispose of plastic bags, after just one or a few uses. But in the report they say the AG Rob Bonta and the California Department of Justice have sent letters to seven top plastic bag manufacturers in the state asking them to substantiate claims that their bags are recyclable. This sounds like the real motive behind Assemblywoman Bauer-Kahan’s and Senator Blakespear’s bills.

According to a study by the National Center for Policy Analysis, an examination of the bag bans and budgets for litter collection and waste disposal in San Francisco, San Jose, the City and County of Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and Brownsville and Austin, Texas, showed no evidence of a reduction in costs attributable to reduced use of plastic bags.

I have been covering the disingenuous plastic bag ban since the mid-2000’s.

In 2009, when plastic bag bans were all the rage in cities around the country, and paper bags were considered tree killers, I reported in the Washington Examiner:

San Francisco’s ban on plastic bags has not provided the environmental results it expected. Anticipated environmental gains resulting from the ban were “nonexistent at best,” and the ban likely did more harm than good. Consumers just switched from single plastic to double paper bags; few consumers remembered reusable totes, which caused delays in checkout; and recycling bins were hard to find or nonexistent.

Additionally, A recent microbiological study found unacceptably high levels of bacterial yeast, mold and fecal bacteria counts reside in the reusable bags (nastysack.com).

The study found that 64 percent of the reusable bags tested were contaminated with some level of bacteria, and close to 30 percent had elevated bacterial counts higher than what’s considered safe for drinking water. Further, 40 percent of the bags had yeast or mold, and some of the bags had an unacceptable presence of fecal intestinal bacteria when there should have been zero.

They are only now realizing that their low-carbon footprint bag is also filled with nasty bacteria if not washed regularly. A recent microbiological study found unacceptably high levels of bacterial yeast, mold and fecal bacteria counts reside in the reusable bags.

Yet, Sen. Blakespear said upon the introduction of her bill, “[Studies show] that the plastic bag ban that we passed in this state in 2014 did not reduce the overall use of plastic. It actually resulted in a substantial increase in plastic. We are literally choking our planet with plastic waste.”

You just can’t make up this drivel.

All of the Globe’s previous articles about California’s ongoing plastic bag ban drama have brought out the ire in voters, with readers commenting, including:

• Let’s put an initiative the ballot to move election day to the same week as tax due day. April 15. Then watch those little Marxist toadies change their tune.
• I wonder how a politician can make laws like this. They work for us not the other way around.
• Ridiculous. This governing body is the laughing stock of the country, while our governor is being called a @!#*! behind his back.
  Push back Californians!
• My guess is that these two elitists never step into a grocery store. They have their paid nannies do the shopping for them. I also wonder if their servants are legal citizens and/or being paid cash under the table.
• When are we going to put an initiative on the ballot mandating a part-time legislature?
• How many Californians are clamoring for this legislation? Few to none? Yet, here we have two wealthy Democrat lawyers who live like royalty in coastal communities like Senator Catherine Blakespear and Assemblywoman Rebecca Bauer-Kahan who think that banning plastic bags is one of the most pressing issues facing struggling Californians? Both of these wealthy Democrat women probably never have to schlep to the store to buy anything and they have everything delivered to their mansions where their household staff deals with it?
• Environmental groups need to get these little things done so everyone can feel good about the important work they are doing and continue drawing a paycheck! Look what we did to save the planet! Send more $$! … it’s how Coastal Elites feel good about themselves. Take a hit on the bong of power.