California Fails to Ban Plastic Bags

A bill authored by California state senator Julia Brownley that would have banned single use plastic grocery bags throughout the state of California failed to pass the state’s senate. The bill was backed by the California Grocers Association, the Sierra Club, and a California environmental activism group called Heal the Bay. However, the bill met serious resistance from lobbyists from the American Chemistry Council.

The American Chemistry Council fought hard against the bill purportedly because it wanted to save the jobs of the hundreds of California residents who work at plants that manufacture the single use plastic bags. Then there is the economic point that those bags are made, shipped, and recycled all by companies who are spending and making money on those plastic bags. The American Chemistry Council argued that all in all, thousands of jobs would be lost. In the current economy, that is a scary thought. That single scary possibility is credited for the bill’s failure to pass in the California state senate.

Recycling may well be the most interesting point in the American Chemistry Council’s argument. While it is true that a great many single use plastic bags do end up sitting in landfills, floating in the ocean, or as debris caught up on trees and having a negative effect on local ecology, a great many single use plastic bags are also being recycled. Modern recycling technology now allows single use plastic shopping bags to be recycled into a great many other consumer and industry products. Though most garage doors are made of metals such as steel and aluminum, or wood, some garage door insulation materials are now being made from materials that are made from recycled plastic shopping bags. That means that plastic bags are linked to jobs to manufacture the bags, jobs to ship the bags, jobs to recycle the bags, and jobs to turn the recycled materials into new things. Using recycled shopping bags to make insulation for home and garage door use helps cut down on the energy needs of the home where quality insulation is installed. Much like an eco-system, single use plastic bags are intricately linked to many things beyond the bags themselves. 

Recycling is a wonderful thing, but Americans do use plastic shopping bags to a heavy extreme. Perhaps a good solution would be for the American Chemistry Council to encourage scientists to invent single use plastic bags that biodegrade quickly include and outside of landfills. This would allow plastic bag manufacturers to continue in their work, while ensuring that the planet is not covered with plastic bags. Paper bags do biodegrade quickly, but they use trees in their manufacturing. Heavy, biodegradable plastics made of corn are now being used to make biodegradable single-use cutlery. Why not apply the same science to single use plastic bags?