by Katy Grimes, E&E Legal Senior Media Fellow and California Globe Editor
As Appearing in the California Globe
‘We are literally choking our planet with plastic waste’
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.
