Santa Monica BANS Plastic Bags!

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Santa Monica officials voted unanimously to ban plastic bags on February 26th, 2008. According to HealtheBay.org, Santa Monica is also considering enacting a charge to use paper bags.

L.A. Times blogger, Siel, reports that the ban will most likely go something like this:

No free bags, period. The point is to discourage one-use bags and encourage reusable bags.

Plastic bags banned at all retail locations in the city.

Biodegradable one-use bags banned at all retail locations in the city, because these bags "present many of the same environmental litter and marine environment problems as plastic bags."

Paper bags that contain old growth fiber, or are not 100% recyclable, or contain less than 40% post consumer recycled content banned at all retail locations.

Recyclable paper bags that contain at least 40% post consumer recycled content AND don't contain any old growth fiber allowed FOR A FEE.

All affected stores must provide reusable carryout bags for sale and, with assistance from the City, promote their sale and use.

Additionally, Heal the Bay has compiled the following statistics:

Each year, approximately 6 billion plastic bags are consumed in Los Angeles County. This is equivalent to 600 bags per person per year. Nationwide, 60,000 plastic bags are used every five seconds.

Approximately 150,000 tons of plastic bags are disposed by Los Angeles County residents each year.

Disposable bags cost our cities up to 17 cents per bag for disposal.
Plastic bags are made from petroleum. Americans use over 380 billion bags every year, throwing away millions of barrels of oil.

100,000 marine animals are killed annually by entanglement in marine debris such as plastic bags.

Alternatives such as REUSABLE BAGS are readily available, affordable. and offer tremendous benefits.

You can buy reusuable bags like this one: BUY IT HERE or just make of habit of taking a large tote bags or beach bags to the store. This ban doesn't really affect us since we have been using canvas bags for shopping for a few years now.