On a magnificent, June-rare, pregnant-with-summer afternoon, the crowd performing cartwheels on your front lawn is rejoicing over the latest victory for environmentalists seeking to ban plastic bags.
First word came from Alix Hobbs, acting Executive Director of Heal the Bay:
“We did it! After years of debate, the Los Angeles City Council just voted to finalize its ban on single-use plastic bags. Thanks to continued encouragement from Heal the Bay and its network of supporters, L.A. is now the largest city in the nation to take aim against the environmental and fiscal waste associated with single-use bags.
“We faced intense lobbying from the plastics industry, but citizens’ voices were heard today in the effort to keep neighborhoods and waterways free of plastic blight. Switching to reusable bags will benefit our local economy, create green jobs and save taxpayer money spent on pollution cleanup. Thanks to all of you who signed petitions, made phone calls or testified at hearings!
“As we celebrate this important victory, our Science and Policy staff remains vigilant about protecting our shorelines from other forms of pollution — be it cigarette butts, polystyrene containers or plastic water bottles.”
Among 90 communities in California, they join Culver City, which imposed its trendy will on bracing businesses a few weeks ago.
Mayor Jeff Cooper told the newspaper this afternoon:
“I’m happy to see that the City of Los Angeles has followed Culver City’s lead in implementing a ban on one-time use plastic bags. Despite efforts to expand recycling programs, these bags have a dismal recycling rate. In fact, 95 percent of these bags, even if re-used once or twice, end up in a landfill or, worse yet, in the ocean.
“From the consumer’s perspective, it might initially seem like an inconvenience to bring a reusable bag each time you go shopping. But it is a habit that forms quickly. Moreover, I think today’s decision by the City of Los Angeles keeps Culver City’s businesses on a level playing field. That is, consumers who might have chosen to go to a store in L.A. because they didn’t have to worry about bringing their own bags, no longer have that incentive.
“This is a win for the environment and for our business community. I am pleased that my colleagues in L.A. made the right decision on this one.”
City Councilman Andy Weissman emphasized the sensitivity of City Hall’s approach:
“It is my understanding that the ordinance passed by the City of Los Angeles substantially mirrors the County ordinance, which Culver City's ordinance was modeled after. The discussion in Culver City regarding single-use plastic bags was to fashion an ordinance that was consistent with efforts ongoing in adjacent communities so as to achieve the environmental goal of reducing the amount of plastic introduced into the waste stream while not placing affected businesses at a competitive disadvantage. We believe our ordinance strikes that balance and if my understanding of the L.A. ordinance is correct, it appears that Los Angeles has done the same with its ordinance.”
While we appreciate seeing more rather than fewer happy people dancing along the lilting landscapes of our lives, consider the latest devastation visited, randomly, upon the plastics industry.
Perhaps thousands of ladies and gentlemen who derive their incomes from the vilified plastics industry, shortly will be thrown to the gutter.
To counter, you may argue that in a free-market economy, enterprises constantly are riding an elevator, that every day somebody is going down and somebody up.
If you don’t know anyone who works in plastics, it may be inconsequential? But what did they do to deserve this?
There may be one fewer bag in your sightlines the next time you are at the beach. Is that a fair tradeoff.
