Posted on 08/25/2008 2:36:41 AM PDT by SmithL
The plastic grocery bag is fighting for its crinkly life.
From the city of San Francisco to Los Angeles County, more than a dozen local governments around the state have proposed or passed plastic-bag restrictions, ranging from recycling mandates to outright bans.
Now, a proposal in the Legislature would put a 25-cent fee on all disposable bags – paper or plastic – given out at drug and grocery store check stands starting Jan. 1, 2010. It has won key support from the grocery and retail industries and faces its next legislative step today.
Those in favor of the fee, led by Assemblyman Lloyd Levine, D-Van Nuys, and a collection of environmental groups, point to dirty oceans, sewers fouled with plastic and millions of dollars in litter-cleanup costs. Opponents – mainly bag-industry and taxpayer organizations – say plastic bags draw more blame than they deserve and the fee would be a burden on consumers.
"People have completely lost their perspective," said Stephen Joseph, a Tiburon lawyer who runs savetheplasticbag.com, an industry group.
Both sides expect a fee would drive shoppers to switch to reusable bags. After Ireland imposed a fee on plastic checkout-counter bags in 2002, their use dropped by about 90 percent.
About 80 percent of bags given out in the state's supermarkets are plastic, according to Californians Against Waste, an advocacy group.
Powerful grocery and retail industry groups objected to an early version of the proposal that put a fee only on plastic bags. They worried that stores would be pressured to switch to paper bags, which cost about 8 cents each vs. about 1.5 cents for a plastic bag.
Now that the measure – Assembly Bill 2769 – covers both paper and plastic, though, grocers are behind it.
Big supermarket and drugstore chains would rather have a single statewide standard...
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
The state of California is swirling around in the toilet bowl and the lawmakers are concerned with grocery bags.
Priorities.
Watch for a huge increase in stolen shopping carts.
Its now Kalifornia.....comrades......
The Soviet Socialist Republik of Kalifornia is keeping its citizens in line.
We went this route in South Africa about 5 years ago. At first people acquired re-usable bags (on sale at our supermarkets - at no profit we were told), but many people gradually slipped into their old habits and just got used to paying for the plastic bags. I have to admit, though, that you see a lot less of them lying around - they used to be known as our national flower!
Wow - me too and for the same reason...
If there are bags at the end of the checkout line, I quietly double bag my purchase just for the extra bag.
Crazy times we live in!
We use the grocery plastic in our kitchen trash can. If the nanny staters take them away, we’ll just end up buying the bigger, thicker plastic bags for our kitchen garbage. Yeah, that will really save the environment. This is another ethanol or CFL debacle in the making.
How do so many fruitcakes get in office?
These commy greenies and their global warmist friends will destroy our country.
The main point is this: If grocery stores, and others, wish to put a fee on bags that is their business, if they don't that is their business. Our government(the USA)has no rights to interfere in private enterprise and especially no right to impose a fee, SAY TAX, on grocery bags.
The wide use of plastic is tied directly to the greenies who now do not own their mistake in pushing them 30 years ago.
I say f*** the government and especially California's government.
No government has any right to tell sellers what the price is for an item. That’s communism. Once this is happens, there will be one more board in the plank of communism in the once-great state of California.
The Aldi Mart grocery store model!
We made the change because we were tired of the bag boys putting three items in a bag and we having to tote 15 bags out to the car and watch everything flop out of said bags before we got home.
There are a lot better uses for the plastic.
That's true, oil is too expensive to waste on grocery bags.
The last time we bought groceries at Wallyworld,we bought a insulated reusable bag to use. We put it in front of the groceries so it could be scanned & then used, but the twit running the cashier started to fold it up & put it in a plastic bag. She then ask if we wanted everything in the bag. I told her I didn't think everything would fit in there but most of our cold stuff would.
The man heading the Democrat ticket has said he intends to TELL YOU how warm you can keep your home, TELL the car manufacturers that they cannot sell SUVs and TELL YOU how many calories you can eat.
This once-great nation is really rotting from the inside.
This Californian says more power to you!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.