In 2021, Californians threw away 230,000 tons of plastic grocery bags, according to CalRecycle. Toxic chemicals leach from plastic bags into our waterways and our food, and Americans consume a credit card’s worth of plastic each week.
These chemicals can have negative impacts on brain development and our reproductive health. Californians voted to ban single-use plastic bags in 2016, but a loophole allows grocery stores to provide thicker plastic bags at checkout and label them “reusable.”
Now plastic bag waste is at an all-time high.
Two bills in the Legislature, SB1053 and AB2236, would close the loophole and finally ban plastic grocery bags in California.
For the sake of our health, I urge Chronicle readers to contact their state legislators and urge them to support these bills. – Nicolas Riani, Oakland.
The issue of plastic bags goes back 2013, when the City of Mill Valley began enforcing them.
Two months after the Mill Valley City Council approved a plastic bag ban for all 13 stores that sell food within city limits, those stores are getting ready for the city to begin enforcing the new law on Jan. 1.