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Archive for the environmental Category
You get to the checkout line, and you realize you forgot to bring in your reusable bags. How many times has this happened to me! And I even manufacture them! Well, I started doing one of two things, and I now remember them most all of the time.
1. If I get all the way to the checkout counter, I will just ask them to put all my groceries back in the cart and I will bag them at the car.
2. I will park my basket and go get my bags.
When I get home and unpack my reusables, I will immediately put them on the door knob to go back in the car the next time I exit. Yes, it takes some time to get in the habit, but I promise you will! You will also find that you have so many less bags to carry in, as our bags hold about 6 of the contents of the plastic bags. The other thing I like best is I can pack them in the way I unload: refrigerator items in one bag, pantry items in another… you get the idea.
So, embrace the new law California. You will get used to it! And several cities like Los Angeles have been there already! Soon it will be the whole country.
Reusble bags are good for all ages to use!
California Becomes First State to Ban Plastic Bags
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Sep 30, 2014, 1:09 PM ET
By FENIT NIRAPPIL Associated Press
A national coalition of plastic bag manufacturers immediately said it would seek a voter referendum to repeal the law, which is scheduled to take effect in July 2015.
Under SB270, plastic bags will be phased out of large grocery stores starting next summer and convenience stores and pharmacies in 2016. The law allows grocers to charge a fee of at least 10 cents for using paper bags.
State Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Los Angeles, credits the momentum for statewide legislation to the more than 100 cities and counties, including Los Angeles and San Francisco, that already have such bans.
The measure marks a major milestone for environmental activists who have successfully pushed plastic bag bans in cities across the U.S., including Chicago, Austin and Seattle.
“This bill is a step in the right direction — it reduces the torrent of plastic polluting our beaches, parks and even the vast ocean itself,” Brown said in a signing statement. “We’re the first to ban these bags, and we won’t be the last.”
WE Care Bags and Media is here to manufacture your full-color film laminate “Walking Billboard” for your company or organization. Give us a call and let us do the rest! 951-204-2165
http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2013/Sep/10/environment-san-diego-plastic-bag-ban/
San Diego is floating the idea of banning plastic bags…
http://articles.latimes.com/2013/dec/31/local/la-me-la-bag-ban-20140101
Large supermarkets can no longer supply disposable plastic bags. Shoppers will have to bring their own totes or pay a dime for paper.
December 31, 2013|By Catherine Saillant
California Senate To Consider Plastic Bag Ban After First Of The Year 2014! http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2013/nov/19/tp-encinitas-council-set-to-talk-about-bag-ban/
ENCINITAS — The City Council will debate Wednesday whether to consider a ban on disposable plastic bags or wait for the state to take action early next year.
“There’s a lot of moving parts to the issue,” Mayor Teresa Barth said Monday as she discussed the options available to the council and the choices that other California cities have made.
Barth stressed that the council won’t be voting on a bag ban at Wednesday’s meeting, but will discuss a new city report on plastic bag restrictions and direct city staff on what to do next.
That direction could include asking staff to draft a bag-ban ordinance for a future council vote; asking for more information on the issue; or taking a wait-and-see approach because a statewide ban is in the works, Barth said.
The state Senate is expected to tackle a bag ban bill in early 2014 — a similar bill this year failed to win passage by three votes.
Some 80 communities in California have adopted ordinances “promoting the use of reusable shopping bags over both plastic and paper carryout bags,” according to a report created by the city’s Environmental Commission.
Most of the plastic bag ban ordinances apply to grocery stores, drugstores and mini-markets, but not to restaurants, the report states. The regulations often also include a fee for paper bag use — 10 to 25 cents a bag.
In San Diego County, Solana Beach has already implemented a plastic bag ban, and San Diego, Oceanside and Chula Vista are considering such measures. Los Angeles and San Francisco also have plastic bag ordinances.
Wednesday’s meeting begins at 6 p.m. at City Hall, 505 S. Vulcan Ave. The bag ban item is toward the end of an agenda that also includes a yearly city status report by the mayor. At 4:30 p.m. the council will also hold a special closed-session meeting to discuss the potential purchase of the former Pacific View School site.
BARBARA HENRY • Special to the u-t
The beautiful Souvenir Custom Best of Oceanside 125th Anniversary Reusable Bags are now available at local participating merchants, the Oceanside Chamber of Commerce, Parks and Recreation, the Californian Welcome Center and at The Sunset Market in Oceanside. (Please see the Oceanside Chamber of Commerce Facebook page for dates they will be at the Sunset Market).
These bags feature beautiful pictures of Oceanside, and the historic pier picture, plus carry over $1000 of coupons and discounts for local restaurants and merchants. The bags were also a benefit for Wounded Warrior Homes, which provides transitional housing for Vets suffering with traumatic brain injury and PTSD.
Each bag sells for just $5, and is a large, sturdy, lead-free, washable bag that can be used and washed over and over. We love seeing these bags around town, and know the support that it gives to the local merchants and Wounded Warrior Homes.
Please purchase bags at the participating merchants (see The Best of Oceanside Bag tab) or at The Oceanside Chamber of Commerce office. They are also sold at the California Welcome Center at Coast Highway and Highway 76.
WE Care Bags is taking reservations for space on The Best of Carlsbad and Encinitas currently. These spots will fill up quickly, so get your reservation in now!
http://www.oceansidechamber.com/news/newsarticledisplay.aspx?ArticleID=1018
Los Angeles became the largest city in the nation to approve a ban on plastic bags at supermarket checkout lines, handing a hard-fought victory to environmentalists and promising to change the way Angelenos do their grocery shopping.
Reusble bags are good for all ages to use!
The City Council voted 13 to 1 to phase out plastic bags over the next 16 months at an estimated 7,500 stores, meaning shoppers will need to bring reusable bags or purchase paper bags for 10 cents each.
The ban came after years of campaigning by clean-water advocates who said it would reduce the amount of trash in landfills, as well as the region’s waterways and the ocean. They estimate that Californians use 12 billion plastic bags a year and that less than 5% of the state’s plastic bags are recycled.
Los Angeles become the latest in a string of California cities – including San Jose, San Francisco and Long Beach – to ban plastic bags.
Plastic bag bans across California vary in scale, with some applying to all retailers and restaurants, and others covering only supermarkets. Some are silent on paper bags while others, like Los Angeles County’s, require markets to charge customers who want to use paper bags.
Officials in some cities with bag bans hail the program as a success.
Santa Monica’s plastic bag ban has been in place since September. “There’ve been no citations necessary to give out,” said Josephine Miller, a city environmental analyst. “No stores have gone out of business.”
San Francisco approved the state’s first plastic bag ban in 2007, applying it only to supermarkets and pharmacies. Since then, officials have moved to expand the bag restrictions, which has drawn a legal challenge.
Despite initial grumbling from customers and business owners, people have gotten used to bringing their own bags, said David Assmann, a manager in San Francisco’s environment department. “I think it’s become part of the culture here,” he said.
In Los Angeles County, the 10-cent paper bag fee has led to a 94% reduction in the use of those bags, said Jennie R. Romer, founder of www.plasticbaglaws.org, who has advised cities on the passage of bag laws.
Things went less smoothly in Oakland, which was sued over its bag ban. That city dropped its measure but will be covered by Alameda County’s plastic bag ban starting next year.
Council members in Los Angeles were egged on Wednesday by actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus and an array of environmental groups. As they prepared to approve the ban, city lawmakers called on their counterparts in Sacramento to follow suit.
“Let’s get the message to Sacramento that it’s time to go statewide,” said Councilman Ed Reyes, who is pushing an effort to revitalize the Los Angeles River.The council’s decision kicks off a four-month environmental review, followed by what is expected to be routine passage of an ordinance enacting the ban.
As they celebrated their action, council members quietly backed away from a more controversial plan to also ban use of paper grocery bags, first proposed last year by appointees of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.
Once the plastic bag ban ordinance is enacted, larger stores will have six months to stop handing out plastic bags and smaller markets will have 12 months. After that, retailers would be required to charge 10 cents for each paper bag they provide customers.
“My hope is that so few paper bags will be used as a result of this measure that the formal ban … on paper bags may not even be necessary,” said Councilman Paul Koretz, who initially had hoped to prohibit paper as well.
Councilman Bernard C. Parks cast the lone opposing vote, saying the city lacked information on potential health hazards from reusable bags.
Employees of plastic bag companies – many in T-shirts with the message “Don’t Kill My Job” – pleaded unsuccessfully with council members to change course, saying they feared they would soon be unemployed.
An industry group warned that the council’s decision will threaten the jobs of 2,000 workers statewide and said it is keeping open the option of filing a legal challenge. “With this bag ban, the city chose to take a simplistic approach that takes away consumer choice instead of pursuing meaningful programs that encourage greater recycling of plastic bags and wraps, while preserving jobs,” said Mark Daniels, chairman of the nonprofit American Progressive Bag Alliance.
May 22, 2013 Ceci Haas, Owner of WE Care Bags and Media Marketing was nominated for four prestigious awards from the San Diego NAWBO – National Association of Women Business Owners. Senator Joel Anderson also awarded Mrs. Haas a certificate of recognition in each category of Women Business Owner of the Year, Trailblazer Award, Green Community Award and Rising Star of the Year. The awards and nomination certificates were presented at the annual NAWBO awards dinner in San Diego on May 22. Ceci also received certificates of recognition from Assemblyman Brian W. Jones.
When asked about these nominations, Mrs. Haas says that she is passionate about her company in that it helps to eradicate harmful plastic bags from the environment, she loves employing single moms or women returning to the workforce and needing a sales job and she also raises money for non-profits through her Giving Green programs.
Golf Course Fundraising Tournament Bags Any golf courses that host tournaments for fundraising can benefit greatly by creating full-color, custom reusable bags for there marketing purposes. Custom bags will be provided to each tournament that is hosted by the golf course, and there are benefits to both the golf course, and the non-profit. The golf course will continue to get branding and marketing long after the tournament ends. Each participating golfer will receive their “swag” bag full of goodies in a full color bag branded with the hosting course’s information. This is a benefit to the non-profit, as they don’t have to find someone to donate bags. The golf course can add their cost of the bags to the entry fee, thus having free ongoing marketing and branding. We can also provide a post card or tag attached to the handles, encouraging a call to action to return to the course at another date. This tag could have a coupon for a bucket of balls, buy one round and get one half off, or anything that the golf course desires. Bags can also be created with pockets or straps to hold bottles of beer or wine. The opportunities are endless! Call us to discuss what we can custom create for your golf course! 951-204-2165
One city and county at a time, millions of Californians have taken a stand to help stop plastic bags from polluting our beaches, clogging our creeks, killing marine life and burdening tax payers and local governments.
A dehydrated, underweight and hypothermic olive ridley sea turtle was rescued from a beach at Camp Pendleton Thursday, according to SeaWorld San Diego.
Veterinarians said the turtle had some damage to its shell and ingested some plastic trash. Plastic bags are sometimes mistaken for food by sea turtles and can cause intestinal problems.
“Sea turtles tend to feed on jellyfish — plastic trash that floats in the ocean is often mistaken for jellyfish,” said Hendrik Nollens, a SeaWorld veterinarian. “This is a perfect example of why we need to keep marine debris, especially plastics, out of our oceans.”
The 42-pound turtle is less than half the weight of what the species can reach. Its sex and age were undetermined. Park officials are treating the sea turtle with fluids and antibiotics, and said they hope to return it to the wild this summer.
SeaWorld San Diego rescues nearly 400 marine animals and birds each year. The olive ridley sea turtle species that breeds along the coast of Mexico is considered endangered, while those in other areas are listed as threatened, according to Sea World. http://camppendleton.patch.com/articles/turtle
SOLANA BEACH, Calif. — The “paper or plastic” question — a hallmark of the modern grocery shopping experience — has been all but outlawed in the small coastal town of Solana Beach. Read more at: http://www.10news.com/news/30961270/detail.html
KAPOLEI — Honolulu could soon become the fourth and final county in Hawaii to implement a ban on single-use plastic checkout bags
Read at: http://www.civilbeat.com/articles/2012/04/25/15659-honolulu-passes-ban-on-plastic-bags/
By Dan Aiello
California Progress Report
In an interview last week with Assemblywoman Julia Brownley, California Progress Report has learned the Santa Monica Democrat plans to fight once more to make California first in the nation to ban single-use, non-biodegradable plastic bags.
The legislation likely will mirror AB 1998, the so-called Brownley Bag Ban, that was defeated by the deep pockets of the Virginia-Based American Chemistry Council, Exxon/Mobil and Poly Hilex manufacturing on the floor of the California State Senate, 21-14. A lot of campaign contributions were made the weekend before the bill came before the Senate for the final time.
“I am committed to seeking a statewide ban on single-use bags,” Brownley told CPR. “I have not yet decided whether I will amend AB 298 to do that, or if I will find an alternative method for accomplishing my goal.”
“What I really want to do is move a policy forward that would eliminate plastic bags altogether,” Brownley told CPR. “AB 1998 has been vetted – it’s been fully baked, as we say here in Sacramento, and the architecture of AB 1998 has been used by most of the cities that have started their own recycle program since the Brownley Bag Ban was defeated two years ago.”
AB 1998 was a tough loss for environmental advocacy groups that had fought hard to ban the non-biodegradable bags. Although environmentalists are used to being outspent lobbying in Sacramento, the Brownley Bag Ban may have passed if not for the formidable campaign contributions of the oil and gas and petroleum manufacturing lobbyists. For the most part, both large and small markets and clothing retailers supported the ban.
When the state legislature first debated the issue California had only 6 communities with some sort of single-use or biodegradable bag program. Today, 13 municipalities have some version of the bag ban described in AB 1998, including Unincorporated Los Angeles County and the City of San Jose, each representing more than a million Californians.
Other cities that already have adopted some single-use ban or biodegradable program – Long Beach, San Francisco, Santa Cruz County, Santa Monica, Marin County, Palo Alto, Manhattan Beach, Santa Clara County, Calabasas, Malibu and Fairfax.
About 10% of all California residents currently live under a mandated bag recycling program.
The City of Los Angeles, Pasadena, Monterey , West Hollywood, Culver City, Solana Beach, San Diego County and Davis currently have a single-use bag ordinances in process and are expected to add to the list of other communities with bag bans and recycling programs with the next 12 months.
The goal of Heal the Bay, sponsor of the legislation, is to increase the number of Californians not using the single-use plastic bags to 25% by next year, regardless of the outcome of the proposed new statewide legislation.
During the AB 1998 debate all parties agreed that a single statewide ordinance would be easier for commerce than a community-by-community approach, especially for franchises or chain clothing or supermarkets.
City governments that must search for ways to dispose of the trash produced within their jurisdictions, especially compact, high density, tourism-dependent cities like San Diego, San Francisco, Santa Barbara or Santa Cruz – find themselves agreeing with the environment advocacy groups supporting the bill in order to protect marine habitat.
California taxpayers spend more than $25 million dollars to collect and bury the 19 Billion single-use, non-biodegradable plastic bags we use each year.
Single-use, plastic bags are referred to as “Urban Tumbleweeds,” for their uncanny ability to blow into our parks and plazas, gutters and highway medians, storm drains and sewer systems and eventually to our rivers, bays and oceans where they are mistaken for food (like a jellyfish) and fatally consumed by 267 watched or endangered species like sea turtles, pelicans and Blue Heron.
The turtle shown in the photo here, mistook the plastic bag for food. Despite intense efforts to save it, it succumbed to the ingestion, which twisted and lodged in its digestive tract.
AB 1998 passed the Assembly but with much of the world watching it went before a senate where the winds had changed following blatant, formidable campaign contributions from Virginia-based American Chemistry Council, Exxon/Mobil and Poly Hilex hours before the vote was scheduled to take place.
With 23 available Democratic Senators to vote the legislation needed only 21 votes to pass. What had become the most watched legislation of that legislative session lost- with 21 opposing and 14 supporting.
“We had a great list of supporters and grass-root efforts but there’s only so much you can do when the other side was definitely hiring big-time lobbyists,” said Kirsten James of Heal the Bay, one of the AB 1998 sponsors and now a sponsor of this year’s Brownley bag bill, AB 298. Both Brownley and James appear confident that with the increased number of communities participating, a statewide regulation in 2012 will find the support it lacked in 2010.
by Alexis Petru 12/09/11 Plastic bag bans are making headlines in California again this week, with two more cities passing ordinances to restrict plastic shopping bags and San Francisco considering strengthening its existing legislation.
In the heart of Silicon Valley, Sunnyvale will ban plastic bags, beginning next June, in large grocery stores and retailers, while exempting restaurants and nonprofit organizations, the San Jose Mercury News reports. To encourage customers to bring their own reusable bags on their shopping trips, stores will charge 10 cents per paper bag distributed – a fee that will increase to 25 cents in 2014.
The city expects the new regulations to reduce plastic bag use within the jurisdiction by 95 percent, from 75.2 million bags a year to 3.8 million, according to advocacy group Californians Against Waste.
Further south, along California’s central coast, the city of Monterey adopted a similar ordinance, banning plastic shopping bags in retail stores and charging a 10-cent fee for paper bags starting in mid-2012, Californians Against Waste reports. Like Sunnyvale’s regulations, the paper bag fee will be raised to 25 cents the following year.
Monterey estimates that the new legislation will cut plastic bag use by 2.8 million bags each year, while preventing 740,000 paper bags from being distributed.
READ: More Cities Explore Plastic Bag Bans
Meanwhile, in San Francisco, the first city to enact a plastic bag ban, the Board of Supervisors has delayed a vote on changes to the city’s original ordinance until February, according to the San Francisco Appeal.
Under San Francisco’s current law, supermarkets and chain store pharmacies are prohibited from distributing plastic bags, but there is no fee on paper shopping bags. Proposed revisions to the legislation would extend the plastic bag ban to all retail establishments by October 2012 and restaurants by 2013. A 10-cent fee would also be placed on paper bags, bringing San Francisco’s ordinance in line with other Californian cities’ ordinances.
With the passage of Monterey’s and Sunnyvale’s new laws, there are now 16 jurisdictions in the Golden State that have banned plastic shopping bags, Californians Against Waste says.
Proponents of plastic bag bans say that simply encouraging shoppers to bring their own shopping bags to stores hasn’t been effective in reducing single-use shopping bags. They also point to the material’s low recycling rates, impact on marine life and litter clean-up costs.
Makers of plastic bags and industry organizations such as the American Chemistry Council, however, criticize plastic bag bans for limiting consumer choice and harming the growth of plastic bag recycling programs. They also say that manufacturing and transporting plastic bags is more environmentally friendly than producing paper bags. http://earth911.com/news/2011/12/09/sunnyvale-monterey-san-francisco-california-plastic-bag-bans/