Among those opponents, the American Chemistry Council, which includes plastic manufacturers such as Exxon Mobile, Dow and Chevron and which retained four major lobbying firms to fight hard against the bill. This is the same group that last year helped defeat a measure in Seattle that would have imposed a twenty cent surcharge on plastic and paper bags distributed at stores. Also in the opponents corner, Peter M. Grande, president of a plastic bag manufacturing plan in L.A. County where two hundred people would have lost their jobs immediately if the legislation had passed. And among the reasons that opponents cited for not passing the legislation through the Governor’s office? Environmental issues. Los Angeles County has estimated that eighty-five percent of consumers would just switch to paper bags instead of using reusable shopping bags. As Grande points out, much of the reason for the switch to plastic years ago was to save the trees!

However, the real point that the lobbyist nailed home was about the "Financial Burden" of asking consumers to pay for disposable bags as well as for businesses to absorb the change during a time when neither can afford additional financial burdens. Here's an example of the justification given by Mimi Walters, R-Lake Forest, who voted against the ban the bag legislation.  "If we pass this piece of legislation, we will be sending a message to the people of California that we care more about banning plastic bags than helping them put food on their table."

Try not to choke on your coffee as you read that! Or to think, realistically, about the cost of something such as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch to the children of the same legislatures who failed to pass this bill. Many of the opponents stated that they preferred a program that offered incentives to people for using reusable bags rather than legislation that banned bags altogether. And, as Massachusetts has recently proven, with the right education and incentives, people will certainly switch to reusable shopping bags. However, a twenty-five percent reduction in bag use as was shown in Massachusetts would not nearly have the same impact as aggressive legislation to ban these unnecessary uses of plastics (and for that matter paper).

California officials claim that people in the state use nineteen billion plastic bags per year (which, ironically, is one bag for every dollar of the California State debt). Those same officials claim that it costs the state twenty-five million dollars to get those bags into landfills, which could also reduce a lot of state debt (and that, of course, is only the bags that people responsibly dispose of!). We think that removing financial burden from consumers and businesses should involve helping reduce their taxes, and that twenty-five million dollars to put plastics in landfills removed from the budget could go a long way towards that!

Many organizations, including some of our favorite greenies over at SHFT, worked tirelessly to raise awareness and make this legislation happen. It's shocking and disillusioning that the legislation failed to pass in a state that's so aware of and in support of necessary environmental legislation. The only upside is that it would appear that Californians are going to pass ban the bag legislation locally regardless. San Francisco, Palo Alto, Fairfax and and Malibu have ban the bag laws. Manhattan Beach has a pending ban the bag law that's tied up in litigation, and Los Angeles County, Redondo Beach and Santa Monica have all said they will pursue local ban the bag legislation.

Now, Californians – Prove the lobbyists wrong and USE RESUABLE BAGS instead of paper ones! (which, by the way, we love this one for small trips and this one for larger trips!).