September 22, 2009
SAN JOSE — Twenty years from now, Americans will look
back in wonder at our addiction to plastic bags. It may be
a stretch to compare it to smoking, but it's on the same spectrum
— only with bags, it's the health of the environment,
especially waterways, that bears the consequence. As surely
as smoking has gone from socially acceptable to increasingly
rare, plastic bags someday will be more of a novelty than
a ubiquitous everyday habit.
Today, San Jose could become a leader in the movement to
phase out the bags that stay with us forever, littering roadways
and estuaries and snarling the gears of garbage trucks.
The City Council should approve the proposal by Mayor Chuck
Reed and council members Sam Liccardo, Kansen Chu, Nora Campos
and Judy Chirco to create an ordinance prohibiting single-use
carryout plastic bags — as well as bags made of nonrecycled
paper — for all retailers except restaurants starting
in January 2011.
The proposal is more reasoned than revolutionary. The 15-month
ramp-up provides a lot of time for community education and
for distributing reusable bags to low-income shoppers, as
some groups already are gearing up to do. The city also will
complete an environmental impact report, which could help
shape the final ordinance as well as provide a defense against
the possibility of a lawsuit from the aggressive Save The
Plastic Bag lobby.
The hardest adjustment for consumers will be getting into
the habit of bringing their reusable bags to the store. At
first, it'll be a pain. But in Europe, canvas bags are the
rule rather than the exception. It can't be that hard. Surely
Americans, too, will find it worth the trouble to leave future
generations a healthier environment — and to immediately
cut down on litter along roadsides and in waterways.
Just last week, the environmental advocacy group Save the
Bay reported that the Guadalupe and Coyote creeks in San Jose
are so cluttered with trash, including plastic bags, that
federal sanctions are possible.
Retailers argue that it would be simpler to just ramp up
recycling. Estimates on current plastic bag recycling are
all over the place: Some environmentalists put it at as low
as 1 percent; the Environmental Protection Agency says 10
percent.
But this nation uses 90 billion plastic bags every year.
Even taking the most optimistic number for recycling and then
doubling or tripling it over a few years would still leave
billions and billions of bags blowing across our skies and
floating into our oceans.
San Francisco has already imposed a plastic bags ordinance,
and a ban went into effect in Palo Alto last week. But as
the third largest city in California, San Jose can take a
leadership role not only with other Santa Clara County cities
but in the state. And San Jose's reputation as a pragmatic
community will make its leadership all the more powerful.
This is the way movements begin. Somebody had to be the first
to ban smoking in restaurants. Who questions the wisdom of
that now? It will be the same with plastic bags a generation
from now.
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