April 14, 2009
Councilmember Chu and Save the Bay Join Forces to Support
a Plastic Bag Ban
(San José, CA) On
Tuesday, April 14 the recycling company Green Team of San
Jose will help Save The Bay announce a major campaign to eliminate
plastic bag pollution in California.
Bay Area residents use 3.8 billion plastic
bags per year and discard over one hundred plastic bags per
second. In turn, toxic plastic bag pollution in San Francisco
Bay is alarming and growing. And the Pacific Ocean hosts a
floating island of trash (the Great Pacific Garbage Patch),
twice the size of Texas, where plastic particles are more
abundant than plankton.
But the multi-billion dollar plastics industry
has dispatched industry lobbyists to California and other
states to block efforts to reduce bag use and sue cities for
banning or requiring fees on plastic bags.
The San Jose City Council is considering
bold legislation – to require a fee on both plastic
and paper bags – that would reduce toxic plastic pollution
in San Francisco Bay that smothers wetlands and kills wildlife.
Stakeholder outreach in San Jose has revealed that residents
and local recyclers are in favor of this program.
“The City of San Jose is committed
to significantly reducing single-use bags in the environment,”
said Councilmember Kansen Chu. “Plastic bags litter
our creeks. In fact, the State Water Board has listed several
waterways in the Bay Area, including Guadalupe River and Coyote
Creek as ‘impaired by trash.’ Plastic debris,
including bags, makes up 60 percent of the litter polluting
our waterways. Experience has shown that outreach and recycling
options alone are not enough to reduce the consumption of
single-use carryout bags.”
Green Team of San Jose (one of the City’s
main recycling companies) is supporting efforts to reduce
plastic bags helping to debunk a common myth from the plastics
industry that recycling is the answer to pervasive bag litter.
In fact, a very small percentage of the billions of bags used
are actually recycled and they often jam machines, costing
the city millions.
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Edesa Bitbadal, Councilmember's Office
office 408-535-4904
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