Battle of the Bags

The city first considered charging a fee for plastic bags — an idea it borrowed from Ireland, where a per-bag fee imposed in 2002 caused plastic bag usage to decline more than 90 percent. This idea met strong opposition from grocers, however, leading city officials to institute a trial recycling program for plastic bags.

While the trial was under way, the state of California — with support from the plastics industry — passed a bill requiring large retail stores to accept plastic bags for recycling. The bill also was amended to bar local governments from imposing fees on plastic bags.

When San Francisco's trial program came to an end, it was deemed a failure by the city because grocers didn't provide verifiable figures on the number of bags that were recycled, citing trade secrets, said Mark Westlund, a spokesman for the city's Department of the Environment.

Dave Heylen, a spokesman for the California Grocers Association, which represents about 500 grocers, confirmed "there was a disagreement on the numbers." He said consumers returned 7.6 million plastic bags to participating stores during the trial, surpassing the goal by 1.5 million, but "San Francisco felt the numbers weren't collected correctly."

With no option remaining to place a fee on the bags, Westlund said San Francisco saw few choices.

'One alternative ... ban them outright'
"We only had one alternative, and that was to ban them outright," he said.

While the aggressive stance of the plastics industry has dampened interest in plastic bag bans, it has not completely halted such measures. In Santa Monica, Calif., the City Council is drafting a ban that some environmentalists say will go well beyond San Francisco's and avert a legal challenge such as the one faced by Oakland.

"This is too big of a problem to recycle our way out of," said Sarah Abramson, coast resources director at nonprofit environmental group Heal the Bay in Santa Monica.

And in Annapolis, Md., proponents of a proposed ban that turned into a recycling program say that they at least managed to set aggressive targets that — if not met — could trigger tougher action.

"We have legislation to require major retail chains to aggressively market reusable bags to reduce use of plastic bags by 40 percent," said City Councilman Sam Shropshire. "If they can't do it we will put the ban back on the table."

In the meantime, at least one retailer is getting out of the plastic bag arena altogether.

Whole Foods Market recently announced that it will eliminate the use of plastic bags in all of its U.S. stores by Earth Day, April 22. The chain will then provide customers only with paper bags made of 100 percent recycled material and reusable bags.

© 2008