Sonoma County Bag Ban News, July 2011

The city council in Sebastopol tonight (July 19) that will include Sonoma County Waste Management Agency presentation on Plastic Bag. Please attend and support us! See agenda here.

Sonoma County Bag Ban News, July 2011

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City councils around Sonoma County are hearing the Sonoma County Waste Management Agency’s presentation on single use bag bans and a possible ordinance to ban them county-wide. Sebastopol’s presentation occurred July 5, but it’s not too late to write your councilmember. Sonoma and Santa Rosa dates are still being finalized.

Attend and support. Write to us at [email protected] to get information on location, time, speaking at city council meetings or how to write a letter in support of this ordinance.
July 13: Cotati
July 14: Rohnert Park subcommittee
August 1: Petaluma
August 3: Windsor
August 9: County of Sonoma
August 10: Cloverdale
August 15: Healdsburg

The Sonoma County Waste Management Agency has been considering the drafting of a plastic bag ordinance for several years now. In the spring, they took a big step forward, committing to presenting the information gathered thus far to all city councils over the summer. The general public is urged to attend to speak out in support of this bag ban as these elected officials can then direct their representatives on the SCWMA to vote for this vital ordinance.

Throughout the month of July and into August, staff is taking the much-researched bag ban news on the road. There they will share the details of how a bag ban will work, which stores, restaurants and businesses and what types of bags would be included.

Plastic bag bans have been passing around the country and around the world for over a decade now and informal assessments of the public will locally indicate that the time is right in our county to follow our neighbors to the south. The Single-Use Bag Forum held in February was well-attended and subsequent support from a broad-based coalition of organizations continues to speak out in favor of more sustainable sack choices.

San Francisco was first in the nation and most shoppers naturally bring their own reusable bags. Marin County adopted their own ordinance earlier this year, but were threatened with a lawsuit by the American Chemistry Council. “Bring it on,” said the late Charles McGlashan, former Marin Supervisor and environmental activist. The county intends to fight the standing, unchallenged practice of requiring an Environmental Impact Report preceding such a bag ban.

An EIR can cost $100,000 or more. Marin and other counties have maintained that removal of plastic bags from circulation, and from the natural environment in particular, can only be a good thing, so a municipality should not have to prove the benefits. Reliance on paper bags in lieu of plastic bags, however, brings its own environmental costs and the citizen coalition ReduceSingleUse.org that has been spurring action locally advises that this ordinance comes with a paper bag fee to discourage this unsustainable, lateral shift.

The average Californian uses 766 plastic bags per year. Many do have second uses, but there are many other alternatives that do not necessitate thin plastic sacks, which somehow or another wind up on roadsides, in trees and shrubs, in rivers and our oceans in tragic numbers. Plastic bags come into our lives in many other forms, as other packaging. There are myriad solutions, many of which can be found on the websites www.ReduceSingleUse.org and on Green Sangha’s Rethinking Plastics Campaign page. Contact the campaign for more information or ways to get involved – [email protected].