Plastic Bags at Grocery Stores

Few years ago at the height of being green, a lot of people were trying to be more green at home.  It was the hype to being green.  A great marketing scheme that I'm sure drove some revenue in all types of businesses.  Last year there was a measure, AB 1998, would have eliminated single use plastic bag at your grocery and pharmacies.  California would have been the first state in the Union to ban all plastic bags but this was rejected by California lawmakers.

Some cities in Southern California have banned plastic bags, San Francisco, Santa Monica and Long Beach is next (see below for more info regarding what other cities are involved).  They want you to encourage you to use you own reusable bags.  If you need a bag, the old traditionally paper bags are available for about $0.10.  Since a few cities are banning the plastic bags, made me wonder if we'll be soon to join the wagon.  I made calls to Ralphs, Vons, and Trader Joes all here in Laguna Niguel.

Ralphs is the only grocery store that rewards its customers for bringing in their own reusable bag, 5pts per bag, 10 being the max per visit.  These of course get added to your points you accumulate for cash back. The manager on duty said there were no plans to their knowledge of banning the plastic bags.

Vons does not offer any cash back or incentive for using reusable bags.  Hopefully I can get a call back from them to discuss more what they are doing green.

Trader Joe's I believe will be the first one to start banning their plastic bag.  They said they are using what is left of their plastic bag inventory.  once that is depleted they will no longer have plastic bags.  That was great to hear that someone is actually doing something about it.

After calling these grocery stores, I thought I should call the people at Heal The Bay and our City Hall (Laguna Niguel) to see if they know of anything.  Heal The Bay was very helpful by providing a document of the current cities banning plastic bag .  Some cities as mentioned have started while some are not starting till 2012

Our friends at City Hall were very nice.  There were unaware of any such ban and heard as much as i have heard.  She contacted her superior and called me back saying there was no process in place to start banning plastic bags in Laguna Niguel.  

Hopefully some other cities in Southern California start banning the plastic bag and it can become a domino effect all over. Maybe we need as a city to band together and contact our local city office and request to put this ban into effect.  There's no reason why we can't go away with plastic bags.  Years ago, that’s what the grocery stores gave out.

Some details regarding plastic bags (source from Heal The Bay Site http://www.healthebay.org/event/rally-county-ban-bag)

• Californians use more than 19 billion plastic grocery and merchandise bags each year, roughly 552 bags per person. This usage generates 147,038 tons of unnecessary waste - enough to stretch around the globe over 250 times.
• Californians throw away over 600 plastic bags per second.
• California taxpayers spend millions to collect and landfill plastic bag waste each year. That figure does not include external costs, e.g. resource extraction and depletion, quality of life issues, economic loss due to plastic bag litter.
• U.S. consumers use 100 billion plastic bags annually, which are all made from fossil fuels.