Paper Or Paper: Long Beach Plastic Bag Ban Effective Today

Are you  freaking serious? Let's all line our bathroom trash cans with our Gelson's canvas totes now, why don't we? Ban big garbage bags while you're at it, who needs those? And down with disposable diapers! Yet another 6 bucks a month spent at the Target that will only hurt the lowest-income budgets. Come on guys, I would have attacked the production of all those ridiculous little half-sized water bottles before I go and blame the bags. How bout a 1 cent crv tax, that would make more sense, wouldn't it? Laaaame.

Hope you enjoy your poor tax. 

Insanity at its
FINEST! What's next? Plastic, plates, knives, forks, spoons garbage bags,
diapers, containers for food, car fenders, and grills? This is about money!
MAKE NO MISTAKE ABOUT IT! Whenever you hear of crap like this coming down the
pike... it IS about the dollar...NOT the environment! Those liberal, left wing
clothe bags are a JOKE! They are unsanitary as all hell... you have to keep
remembering to bring them with you (like a good communist) to the grocery store
and... if you forget it... you have to bend over, spread em, and buy a new one!
You see... it's about money. Down the road in five years you'll hear on the
news that banning the plastic bags was not a good idea after all.

Where on earth do these far left WHACK JOBS
COME FROM ANYWAY?

There is NOTHING bad about the plastic bags.
They are handy for putting things in as well as very handy to use as trash
bags. You tie them up and you’re done.

The large bureaucratS want you to purchase
bags to help the economy for lobbyists who represent companies like
Weyerhaeuser so they can realize greater profits other than just the money they
get from the huge chain stores that purchase them buy the pallet load. Trust
me... it's about MONEY... it ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS IS! 

As a long beach resident who enjoys the beach I think this is a great ban. I just wish the country could ban bags. I can't tell you how many plastic bags I see on our beaches and elsewhere on a daily basis. If you need trash bags or bags to put things in go buy 100 of them for a dollar, or you can try saving money and your surroundings by reusing bags. It is really easy and worth it. Just remember to leave them in your car. Keep a few extras in there in case you forget. Stop whining about not having plastic. This system works look it up!

" What's next? Plastic, plates, knives, forks, spoons garbage bags,
diapers, containers for food, car fenders, and grills?"

I hope so!

"This is about money!"

No, this about using our planet as our own private trash can.

Now that Long Beach has taken this step, we can finally start asking our upstream neighbors to do the same without being total hypocrites.

Already working on that! People can buy recyclable bags/totes from reuseit.com that last for 3-5 years if taken care of properly! They also have shopping bags that fold up into a ball and can be clipped onto a key chain. People never forget their keys and they'll always have a shopping bag on hand. :)

I'm petitioning to ban plastic bags (and sometime in the future paper bags too) in Riverside County. I sent an e-mail to the Murrieta Mayor and he said I have to come in and present my case with public comments.

Why don't you volunteer for a beach cleanup in long beach, then tell me how you feel about the plastic bag problem?

So... mind telling me why Paper Bags are still around? They take far more resources to create/recycle and have more of an impact on the environment. Basically the only way this works is if you target both plastic and paper. Otherwise you just shift the pollutant from plastic bags to paper bags.

A small CRV on plastic bags would have solved this issue. How often do you see a soda can or plastic bottle on the floor? You don't because they're worth .5 to whoever picks it up.

Want clean beaches, make a CRV of .5 per bag and you'll see a lot more returned and off the floor.

Mind you, it's not the locals who are polluting either. It's those inland who don't have plastic bag bans that are the ones who bring them to the beach and leave them. So this doesn't prevent beaches from being dumped full of bags.

"So... mind telling me why Paper Bags are still around?"

Paper is biodegradable, plastic is not. Here is a short video called "Plastic is Forever" that will help explain.

http://planetgreen.discovery.c...

Let me retort with this little factual lay out on why Paper is not better than plastic:

http://www.reuseit.com/learn-m...

-It takes almost 4 times as much energy to manufacture a paper bag compared to a plastic bag. 

-Studies indicate it takes 91% less energy to recycle a pound of plastic
than it takes to recycle a pound of paper. But recycling rates of either
type of disposable bag are extremely low.

-Many people choose paper over plastic because they believe it will
biodegrade faster than plastic will break down in a landfill. However,
there are a number of factors that determine how quickly, if at all,
paper degrades – this includes temperature, pH, the type of bacteria
present and the form of paper (shredded paper degrades faster.) That
being said, it makes more sense to opt for a reusable bag that will last
for thousands of uses over a disposable that will end up in the
landfill.

So why is paper still around? Probably because they have a better lobbying group than the many plastic bag companies that were just put out of business. Also it's seen as the green option to those who don't know better.

Either way it comes down to being a tax on the poor who already can't afford it to shell out another dime at the market line for something that isn't any better for the environment.

There is no half measure. You either ban paper and plastic and make it reusable bags only, or you're just shifting the problem.

"-It takes almost 4 times as much energy to manufacture a paper bag compared to a plastic bag. "

I agree. If it were up to me all paper products would be made from hemp instead of trees. My point is that paper waste is not polluting our oceans. Plastic waste is.

Are you too busy smoking that hemp or did you just fail to read the link? Paper takes up as much as twenty times as much fresh water to make a paper bag than it does a plastic bag.

The majority of kraft paper is made by heating wood chips under pressure at high temperatures in a chemical solution. This is why paper mills smell awful. All these contribute to air and WATER pollution. 

You're fooling yourself if you don't think that paper bags create the same amount of water pollution due to run off of the chemicals into the ocean.

And just in case you're too high right now, let's sum it up  - PAPER BAG PRODUCTION IS POLLUTING OUR OCEANS....

Ay, I'm back with an answer for picking up animal poop. There's a biodegradable bag made of non-GMO corn with less packaging:
http://www.amazon.com/BioBag-R... .

There are also health hazards with reusable bags when putting meat products in them. No duh. The same concept can be applied to anything that touches poop. E. Coli is poop. There's E. Coli in meat. Why is there shit on meat? The meat industries are using unsafe methods to process meat. Anyways, that's a whole other issue. The main point is that education for sanitation is important for switching to reusable bags. Here's the link: http://www.npr.org/blogs/healt... .

There should be a ban on paper bags but to a certain extent like supermarkets and retailers until further alternatives are available, because people do have pets they have to clean up after.

You mean to tell me that paper bags are better for poop pick up than plastic? Considering how much moisture goes through them when I put a gallon of milk, I don't want to see you try putting dog crap in it.

I've never seen paper bags on the sidewalk for dog poop pick up. It's always black plastic bags... which would be banned now, right? 

Hm, I see your point. That's why I said to a certain extent because I don't have a solution for that. I have cats so I use a pooper scooper to toss it into a paper bag and then into the garbage. We'll just have to ban plastic bags at the check out line for the time being and use the black plastic bags provided. We also can't forget that we are taking a step towards reducing our waste and every bit matters.

 But we really aren't reducing our waste. Everyone who relied on plastic bags before will just depend on paper bags. A product that isn't greener for anyone.

In Ireland when they banned plastic bags in markets the sale of over the counter plastic trash bags went up 75%. So there's still going to be people using plastic. Only they'll have to pay for it now.