January 25, 2011 Tuesday

Plastic Bag Ban Ordinance – Marin County Board of Supervisor’s Meeting

“The next time we discuss this topic will be downstairs in court!” spouted Stephen L. Joseph, the lawyer for Save the Plastic Bag Coalition (a front for the plastics industry), to the Marin County Board of Supervisors on the day that they voted four to zero to outlaw plastic bags at grocery store checkout counters in unincorporated areas of the county and to impose a five-cent charge on paper bags. In his gray rumpled business suit, Mr. Joseph was the only one out of twenty-four public speakers to throw water on the good-feeling party atmosphere that filled the Supervisors chamber that morning. Every seat was filled and standing bodies lined the walls that surrounded the Supervisors podium.

The Supervisors had delayed this vote for two weeks to review the 91 legal documents that Mr. Joseph and the Save the Plastic Bag Coalition had submitted. Despite the threat of being sued, Supervisors Judy Arnold, Susan Adams, Steve Kinsey and Charles McGlashan (Supervisor Hal Brown was on sick leave) without reservations gladly voted for this ordinance. Before they could vote the crowd stopped them. People wanted to speak their support and to congratulate the supervisors for their bold move. Charles McGlashan had worked on this effort for five years, and he thanked his assistant, Maureen Parton, for her hard work winning over the all the supermarkets and the department for weights and measures. Enthusiastic speakers noted that plastic bag bans in other cities have resulted in a significant drop in paper bags because shoppers switch to reusable canvas ones. Zero waste was the stated goal and this ordinance moves us along that path. Speaker after speaker volunteered for the outreach and educational efforts needed to encourage people to switch and praised the Supervisors for standing up to the plastics industry.

Surfrider Foundation Marin’s officers were present to witness this historic event (that’s us in the above photo: myself, Scott Tye chairman and David McGuire head of our Rise Above Plastic program). Dave spoke about the impact of plastic on our oceans and showed a sculpture of a turtle made from plastic waste gathered last spring at Surfrider’s beach cleanup at Stinson.

Community support for this ordinance was strong. The audience gave the Supervisors an enthusiastic standing ovation after the vote and each supervisor proudly beamed from ear to ear.

Jumping ahead, on February 24th Save the Plastic Bag Coalition officially sued Marin County to stop implementation of the ban the bag ordinance. They claimed the Supervisors did not conduct an Environment Impact Report. Get their reasoning here: the ban on plastic bags will encourage the use of paper bags and that paper bags include 3.3 times more greenhouse gas emissions, four times the consumption of water and 2.7 times more solid waste production than a plastic bag. What non-sense! On a one to one basis Mr. Joseph is correct. But our objective is to do away with paper bags and replace them reusable ones. Kate and I have been using the same canvas bags for years and by now I’m sure our bags have more than reversed the above ratios. With every trip to the supermarket we are saving greenhouse gas emissions, water consumption and solid waste production needed to produce the countless plastic bags that we did not use.

Regardless what happens in the courts, the public is converting to reusable bags because it is the right thing to do.