Reuse This Bag Supports Assembly Bill 68!

California state assemblymember Julia Brownley is on a mission to reduce the amount of disposable shopping bags being wasted and littered across the landscape every day in California, and she has a plan: Assembly Bill 68, a bill which would assign a 25-cent fee to plastic, paper, and compostable grocery bags in an effort to promote the use of reusable bags and curb needless usage (and further production) of disposable options.

Why is the fee 25 cents?

* To effectively deter the use of single-use bags and encourage consumers to switch to reusable bags, the fee must be set high enough to have a real impact on consumer behavior. Ireland’s current bag fee is set at the equivalent of 33 U.S. cents. The policy was so successful that it significantly reduced plastic bag litter by over 90%.

Is this a tax?

* No. This is a regulatory fee under Article XIII A of the California Constitution because the amount and nature of the fee have a fair and reasonable relationship to the environmental, public health, and societal burdens imposed by the use of plastic and paper carryout bags.

This bill could be huge — one of its strongest points is that it doesn’t let paper bags off the hook, curbing the plastic industry’s cries of biased treatment and holding paper plants equally accountable for wasteful production and unsound ecological policies. But this bill needs your help. Do you believe in a less wasteful tomorrow for California? Then send Assemblymember Brownley a letter and let her know you support the cause! It only takes a few minutes, and it’s an uphill battle for these sorts of bills. We already sent ours! Take the time today — the environment will thank you for it.

Friday, May 8th, 2009 at 3:53 pm and is filed under It's Funky. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.