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QUESTION: San Francisco banned plastic bags in 2007. The San Francisco ordinance states as follows:
Plastic shopping bags have significant environmental impacts each year, including...the use of over 12 million barrels of oil for bags in the U.S., as well as the death of over 100,000 marine mammals from plastic entanglement.
This statement is clearly untrue, as demonstrated on this website. How do you account for this kind of misinformation being accepted by decision-makers?
ANSWER: We believe that decision-makers such as those that adopted the San Francisco ordinance are not asking questions or fact-checking. They read a statement on a website and assume that it must be true just because it is repeated hundreds of times on the Internet. They are either too lazy to search for the truth or have no real desire to learn the truth.
QUESTION: Is it true that the plastic bag manufacturers are petro-chemical companies?
ANSWER: No. Plastic bag manufacturers are totally independent of oil and gas or petro-chemical companies. Many plastic bag manufacturers are small family-owned businesses. If plastic bags are banned or a plastic bag tax is imposed, many of these companies will shut down and their employees will have to be let go, including many in California.
Manufacturers are already struggling with high resin and energy prices. The largest plastic bag manufacturer in the country recently emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
QUESTION: Are plastic bags recyclable?
ANSWER: Yes, absolutely. In California, large supermarkets are required by law to provide plastic bag recycling receptables for consumers to dispose of bags. Virtually all of the bags placed in these recycling bins are actually recycled into new products. The principal recyclers are TREX and AERT which use the discarded bags to make plastic or composite lumber.
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