Posted on 09/22/2009 10:45:11 PM PDT by CounterCounterCulture
The San Jose City Council on Tuesday voted to make the city the largest in the nation to ban most plastic and paper shopping bags — and took steps to bring other Santa Clara County cities along with them.
Although the ban approved Tuesday won't take effect until 2011 — and still must go through an environmental impact study that will require the council's final signoff — it's a major new front in the war on plastic bags, which environmentalists say foul waterways, clog landfills and threaten wildlife.
Banding together as a region, top elected officials from Morgan Hill to Palo Alto joined Mayor Chuck Reed on Tuesday in support of San Jose's ordinance, which would ban the distribution of free plastic shopping bags at all retailers.
"I'll step out and take the lead in the South Bay to eliminate the scourge of plastic bags," said Reed, who was also flanked by officials from Milpitas, Campbell and Santa Clara. The mayor has made "green" business the core of his economic development plan. Palo Alto's ban on single-use plastic bags went into effect last week, and San Francisco's ban has been in place since 2007. A ban in Oakland was shelved in the face of a lawsuit that claimed the city failed to adequately study its effects; the plastics industry has aggressively challenged bag bans in court.
(snip)
"Legal work needs to be done," Reed told the council. "Many other cities went ahead and got sued because they didn't do it right."
(Excerpt) Read more at mercurynews.com ...
So what’s the problem with paper bags?
Charging for bags is a good way to get customers to reuse their old ones.
Plastic bags also cause global warming!
Paper or plastic? Sorry, that question is no longer valid.
Because nothing is safer than a pack of bloody chicken legs siting in a cloth sack. These cloth sacks that are all the rage are stupid and do nothing to save on energy and are an excellent way of spreading disease and can become a breeding ground for deadly mold.
Okay...All in favor of lobbing off Kali at the state lines and letting it float away into the Pacific?
Yeah... most of them biodegrade just fine, or can be recycled together with other recyclable paper products.
I wonder if anyone ever thought of making these “council” member submit to a drug test.
You have to cut down tress of course. The fact that fabric either comes from plants or man made chemical processes is lost on the loony left.
What about condoms?
I suppose people could launder these sacks between uses, but who bothers? Yes it is an excellent way of spreading foodborne illness.
Seeing as how no plastic bag we get is "single-use" (they are all reused as lunch bags, tote bags, garbage bags, etc.) does that mean we're exempt?
You got it.
Well, I bought a lifetime supply of incandescent bulbs last year, looks like I'll be buying a big supply of plastic bags tomorrow.
I can’t believe that I have to move back to this crap.
I’m so going to miss GA.
*Sigh*
The problem with that is these sacks are cheaply made and probably would start falling apart after a couple of times in the spin cycle. Also do you want your groceries smelling like Tide and Downy?
Absolutely nothing at all except they were effectively banned about 20 years ago to save the Earth or whatever.
I remember people complained about Styrofoam Big Mac containers until they switched to wax paper or cardboard.
Tide and Downy? You have to use environmentally friendly soap and beat them against a rock.
Perhaps people are not supposed to eat meat?/sarc of course
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