Save The Plastic Bag

LA COUNTY'S CLAIM THAT UP TO 25% OF LITTER IS PLASTIC BAGS IS LUDICROUS

Los Angeles County is asserting that "as much as 25 percent of the litter stream" is plastic carryout bags. (LA County Initial Study at pages 1-3 and 3.9-5.) The assertion is ridiculous. Anyone can see with their own eyes that it is not true.

Let's compare the figures from other cities and states that have done their own litter audits:

The San Francisco Department of the Environment litter audit conducted before plastic bags were banned in that city showed that plastic retail bags were 0.6% of all litter.
The Florida figure is 0.72%.
The Toronto figure is 0.13% (see page 35 of Toronto study).
The worst figure that we have found is in the Keep America Beautiful litter audit. That figure is 5%. The figure in that audit for plastic bags at storm drains is 0.9%. However, the definition of plastic bags in that audit (at page A-2) is as follows: “Plastic trash bags, and plastic grocery, and other merchandise shopping bags used to contain merchandise to transport from the place of purchase, given out by the store with the purchase (including dry cleaning bags). This category includes full bags….”

It is easy to take photographs of plastic bags in trees or by roadsides and post them on websites. That kind of selective and photography is misleading.

The pictures below are of the Los Angeles River. Anti-plastic bag activists show these photographs to justify plastic bag bans. Do you see any plastic bags in the photographs? What can you see?

The Los Angeles River. Spot the plastic bags (if any).

BANNING PLASTIC BAGS DOES NOT SOLVE THE LITTER PROBLEM

San Francisco banned plastic bags at supermarkets and large drug stores in 2007. Those stores have replaced plastic bags with paper bags. However, thousands of other stores in San Francisco continue to provide plastic bags to their customers.

The video for which a link is provided below was taken in 2009 outside the Trader Joe's supermarket on Bay Street prior to regular street cleaning which takes places twice a month. The pavement in the video is on Mason between Francisco and Bay. The video shows abundant street litter, including paper bags.

Banning plastic bags has had no substantial effect on reducing litter. All the non-plastic bag litter in the video still has to be cleaned up. By banning plastic bags, the city has not saved one penny in cleanup costs.

ACTIVISTS MISSTATE LITTER COSTS

Anti-plastic bag activists are constantly trying to blame plastic bags for all litter.

According to a press report, former California Assembly Member Lloyd Levine has claimed that "[t]he state spends $300 million cleaning up bags -- getting them off the beaches and out of the storm drains." If Assembly Member Levine did in fact make this statement, it is incorrect by his own admission. On his website (which no longer exists) he said that the state spends $303.2 million on all litter cleanup from beaches and state highways, not just plastic bags.

Heal the Bay claims that “Plastic bags have become so ubiquitous that public agencies in Los Angeles County collectively spend $18 million annually to clean up plastic bag litter.” In fact, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works and the Flood Control District spends $18 million per year on streetsweeping, catch basin cleanouts, cleanup programs, and litter prevention and education efforts. That includes all types of litter and cleaning generally, not just plastic bags.

In an op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times, two Los Angeles County Supervisors, Yvonne Burke and Zev Yaroslavsky, state:

About $375 million is spent in California on cleanups and other efforts to mitigate the environmental effect of disposable bags, costing each household about $200.

What nonsense! The population of California is 36.4 million. $375 million divided by 36.4 million is $10.30 per person. Are we to assume that each household has 20 people?

The Supervisors do not state in the article how the $375 million figure is calculated, but it is apparently the entire California litter cleanup budget - not just for plastic bags, but for everything. Why are they pinning the entire state litter cleanup budget on plastic bags?