Deputy Mayor Roberts hands out reusable shopping bags to promote City’s efforts to conserve resources and protect the environment
SOLANA BEACH — Solana Beach becomes the first city in San Diego County to ban the use of plastic shopping bags in grocery stores and pharmacies when a new city law takes effect starting on Thursday.
The city has instituted this ban specifically targetting single-use carry-out plastic bags in an effort to conserve non-renewable resources, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, waste, beach liter and marine pollution.
“Plastic bags harm marine ecosystems and clog landfills with materials known to take more than a century to decompose,” said Solana Beach Deputy Mayor Dave Roberts. “Solana Beach is leading the way by encouraging ecologically green and clean practices which help protect our beaches, local wildlife, and the environment,” said Roberts.
San Francisco passed the first law banning the use of plastic bags in 2007 and 44 other cities in California and over two-dozen others around the country have followed suit.
This ordinance effects grocery stores and pharmacies. For all other retailers, the ordinance goes into effect on November 9. Single-use plastic carry-out bags are often derived from petroleum and are given at point of sale purchases to carry goods such as marchandise or food. This ordinance does not include include bags provided to transport products such as produce, meat, poultry, dry cleaning or laundry items.
The new city law also requires stores to charge a ten cent fee for each paper bag they use in an effort to push consumers toward using more reusable shopping bags. All revenues from this fee are to be kept by the individual stores.
WHO:
Solana Beach Deputy Mayor Dave Roberts and community volunteers
WHAT:San Diego’s first plastic bag ban begins; Solana Beach city leaders hand out reusable canvas shopping bags to kick-off the new program
WHEN:Thursday, August 9, 2012
11:00 am – 12:00 pm
WHERE:Sprouts Farmers Market, 659 Lomas Santa Fe Drive at I-5, Solana Beach, CA
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1 comment:
One side effect here is that epos systems would get an influx of paper bag transactions. While I don't think this will be much of a problem on the system, maybe they should increase the fee. That should be more encouragement to use reusable bags.
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