I suspect you heard some of the same
well-meaning warnings as a child that I did: Don’t talk to strangers. Don’t run
with scissors. Don’t sign ballot measure petitions.
What? You didn’t hear that last one? Well,
I’m here to share it with you now because there’s a new ballot measure petition
circulating that you should not sign. It’s
designed to overturn one of the boldest environmental bills the California
legislature has passed in a long time. That
legislation, Senate Bill 270, was signed into law in September and establishes
the first statewide ban on distribution by grocery stores of the ubiquitous
plastic grocery bag. The ban phases in over a couple of years and includes some
special funding to make sure a single-use plastic bag manufacturing company in
Southern California is able to transition to making other products.
The petition to place a referendum on the 2016 ballot to overturn the new law
is pushed by the American Progressive Bag Alliance, a group that’s part of the
plastics industry trade association called SPI. Both groups are based in
Washington, DC. Both groups represent plastic bag manufacturers based outside of California who
are apparently offended by Californians’ desire to live in a place that’s not
polluted with plastic bags.
Are Californians being too harsh when we decide to stop bag pollution? Well, as
I write this at my desk in a second-floor office in downtown Sacramento, I can
look out my window and see a plastic grocery bag hanging from the high branches
of an old oak tree. Right now I feel rightly hostile toward plastic bags. Plastic
grocery bags haven’t always been the norm. They started becoming a regular part
of the grocery shopping experience in the 1980s, when major grocery store
chains started shifting from paper bags to plastic. Since then, they have also
grown as a consumer of oil (in their manufacture) and a source of
non-biodegradable ocean pollution and everyday street litter (in their end
use).
The senate bill establishing the plastic bag ban wasn’t created on a whim. It
was the result of many years of work and had been preceded by other ban bills
that failed. The bill had also been preceded by adoption of local plastic bag
bans in more than 100 California cities. And, significantly, the bill was supported by a diverse coalition
that included the California Grocers Association and the California Retailers
Association.
So now we have a situation that we’ve seen before in California. State
lawmakers create policies that protect the environment and have broad support.
Then out-of-state special interests move in and try to stop the policies from
taking hold.
The plastics makers who want to kill the ban bill have just over two months
left to collect more than 500,000 signatures to put the referendum to overturn
the bag ban on the ballot in 2016. They will be hiring signature gatherers who
are paid per signature to assertively obtain your John Hancock.
If you are approached by anyone in the next couple of months asking that you
sign a petition to put a bag measure on the ballot, just say no.
There are times when well-meaning warnings are worthwhile. This is one of them.
Pass it on.
