The environmentalists have hit the news again. According to a report by the A.P. the San Francisco city council, by a vote of 10-1, passed a law banning the use of plastic bags in their city. The law is effective in six months for grocery stores and takes effect in one year for pharmacies.
So let’s just cut down some more trees.
If Mayor Newsom signs the bill San Francisco will be “the first U.S. to adopt such a rule.”
The ban would apply to petroleum based bags and not biodegradable plastic bags which might be acceptable.
Juice readers. Any thoughts on this pending action?
That’s why we shop at Costco. They give you boxes instead of bags for your purchases
Personally – I prefer paper bags to the plastic. But I always reuse the plastic ones and the paper ones. I do not think it is something that should be regulated though. Perhaps offering retailers an incentive for switching would be better.
I think SanTana has bigger fish to fry at this juncture….they need to focus on the massive problems their crumbling, decaying city is facing.
The public should have choices. If plastic bags are worse then paper when taking into account all the factors, then assess an environmental fee on the manufacturer who can pass that down to the consumer. But people should have the choice. San Francisco’s politicians turn out to be, ironically, anti-choice.
Why the heck does SF feel obligated to do this? There are good ways to do something about the environmental harm that platic bags cause…
But come on now! If we REALLY want to do something about it, we can either follow Bladerunner’s suggestion AND/OR encourage consumers to use reusable bags (like I do EVERY time I go to Trader Joe’s!). But ban plastic bags?
I consider myself to be quite progressive, but even I have to wonder what those SF Supes are smoking sometimes…
What the hell is Santana? Lets be more appropriate and you the correct word for our city. It is Santa Ana, not Santana.
Luis. Re SanTana.
I was simply following the name used by several people who are responding on Santa Ana blog stories. You are correct, and this Anglo, who once had a corporate office in Santa Ana, will refrain from the hood slang.
Because SanTana is a ghetto, I for one, will continue to refer to it using hood slang. Most of the writers at OC Weekly refer to the ghetto as SanTana too.
SanTana isn’t hood slang–it’s how the natives of the city pronounce the King’s English. Think about it.
Gustavo , As you have perceived some posters are intent on using every and any deragotory opportunity to attack Santa Ana simply because it is predominantly Hispanic .That is why the association of SanTana with ghetto . It is kind of amusing . I have only seen Santa Ana written as SanTana in the Recycled Cholo Blog before seeing it here . Maybe he can give us his insight as to why he uses the spelling of SanTana .
This month IKEA adopted a store policy to reduce plastic bag usage. They now encourage customers to refrain from using plastic bags by charging 5 cents per bag.
At the same time they offer selling their large Blue bags for 59 cents to encourage customers to switch to the re-useable Blue bag. IKEA will not make any profits from this. The profits will be donated to local community forests.
IKEA projects that the number of plastic bags used by their U.S. customers will be reduced by at least 50% from 70 million to 35 million in the first year.
This program was launched in IKEA stores in the UK in late Spring 2006, and reduction has been a monumental 95 percent. Also, blue bag purchases were increased, since IKEA encouraged usage for a multitude of purposes.
First, SF doesn’t have a City Council. Because we have a Combined City and County Government, we have a Board of Supervisors.
Next, I think it should also be pointed out that this only affects chain pharmacies and large grocery stores. SO, your mom-and-pop groceries won’t be affected. SF also has some unique environmental factors for banning the bags. Much of our rainwater system flows down to the bay, and these plastic bags never break down. These bags kill fish and wreak massive environmental damage upon the City.
And oh yeah, they are manufactured courtesy of the Black Gold we import from Saudi Arabia, just one more way we are indebted to the Middle East.
Why should the city pay the stores to get rid of these bags? If anything, they should pay to use them. A $0.17 tax had previously been floated, and would have probably been just as successful as the outright ban.
As your resident Environmental Scientist (yes that’s really what I do for a living) I’m going to have to side with the F Supes and hopefully Santa Ana going for Paper over plastic for the following reasons;
First, I know that most paper bags used for groceries are made of a majority post-consumer product. That means the bags are made form recycled materials so that the cutting down of trees to maker bags is reduced and or eliminated.
Second, this practice of using post-consumer materials creates a whole chain of economic multipliers. From the person collecting materials to take to the recycler and receive a CRV, to the recycling yard owner and worker, the truckers who move the materials from post-consumer to final new product and new consumers (new bags.
Third, the environment is exponentially benefited by reducing the number of hydro-carbon bags lefty in the various media Land, Water, and body tissues. Yes these bags are sometimes consumed by animals who think they are food and are killed as a result.
As a Democrat, I think I am one of the most staunch defenders of personal choice in the vein of Libertarian ideals, meaning no one should tell another person what they can and cannot do if they are causing no one harm.
But with regards to plast9ic bags, I believe that the harm caused to the environment, and I as a consumer and user of the environment for my personal enjoyment, recreation, and quality of life, far outweigh ones choice to use plastic bags.
My local Albertsons has a small gray-blue bus type bench near the entrance used by many customers. Attached to it is a plaque that says the bench was made with thousands of recycled plastic bags. Just inside the store is a bin where one can drop off bags. I’ve made use of this bin many times. Perhaps the stores need to make these drop-off bins more prominent and do something to encourage customer use.
But they do pile up fast! And I often forget to return them to the store. An incentive of some sort might help.
I love what IKEA is doing.
The other day my friend asked me where I kept the scizzors. I asked him what he was going to do with them as I handed them to him. He said he was going to cut the plastic rings from the six-packs just in case they winded up at sea saving a bird or dolphin from snaring one around their neck or nose. I forgot all about that and guess who taught my friend to cut the rings? — Me!
Isn’t that part of the reason of banning plastic? Because of the hazard to wildlife?
And Luis — you need to get out more and read more. I believe Gustavo Arellano first coined the spelling “SanTana” as a way of stating the proper local as well as universal pronunciation of the city’ name. It simply is a way to familiarize people with the city and its culture.
And please respond to the posts and stop with your verbal abuse.
Well Mary- Guess what. The correct pronunciation of Santa Ana is not Santana. Therefore, your theory is not only invented, but truely wrong.
The word Santa Ana is already and spanish and does need to be translating in Spanish. Thanks for playing!
Luis, you’re coming off as a custodian of Cervantes, which is just as bad as Americans who ding Latinos for speaking accented English. Yes, Santa Ana is already Spanish–but then why do many Mexican immigrants pronounce it as SanTana? And if you don’t believe me, hear Las Jilguerillas’ version of “El Bracero Fracasado.”
Tavo,
I very rarely disagree with you, in fact the only other time I can recall had to do with Nativo, but you are adding to the very same stereotype you are trying to engineer through your periodical.
I understand many immigrants call this city after a Mexican president rather than a saint, but the method in which many readers are choosing to use it demeans the city and it is being used to insult not to be informative. If you look at it from that perspective you would see what I mean. Surely you would understand that.
Those that are using “SanTana” on this blog are doing so as a way to show their bigotry towards the Latino community. I don’t know if Larry was doing so in this fashion, but I would hope that he would refrain from doing so in the future.
The smart mouthed bigots that like to deride Santa Ana and it’s Latino citizens should do so using their names rather than posting anonymously.
Stop out of the shadows bigots and show your faces.
In regards to the topic of paper or plastic, I applaud the efforts being taken by San Francisco. I hope that Santa Ana follows suit.
The name of our city comes from St. Anne. It commemorates the history of our city as a Spanish land grant. It also reminds us of the Catholic beginnings of this area – to date the Catholic Church remains a huge influence.
To bastardize this name into SanTana is to disregard where we come from – and we should never do that…
In case you didn’t notice Art, it was one of your own blog authors that used the derogatory SanTana first.
Why don’t you just school your people and edit out the negative references yourself?
I see nothing negative with “SanTana” as it is only a way to emphasize the way latinos say the city’s name. The “a” at the end of “Santa” and the “A” at the beginning of “Ana” simply merge. The “T” in SanTana just emphasizes the accent or pronunciation.
I think most of us get it. It’s an insider’s expression to the culture of Santa Ana.
Explode and get defensive and YOU will give the bigots the upper hand.
Mary
Anonymous #20. Yes, it was I, a Juice blogger, who used the name in this post headline. A name that I have often seen written or heard. Let me point out that it was not used out of disrespect. Larry Gilbert is not a bigot no matter how you interpret the headline. Thank you Gustavo and Mary for your comments.
What is worth pointing out is when an African-American says something about his race, or someone of the Jewish, Polish or Irish ancestory does, they get a pass. Perhaps the sensitivity would be diminished if I were of Mexican heritage or lived in Santa Ana.
Let’s move on. And by the way, I spent an hour this morning driving around Santa Ana looking at the conditions of your roads so that I can come to my own conclusion on their condition based on my own observations.
Good gawd y’all are way to sensitive. People call it SanTana because that is how hispanics pronounce it. They have pronounced it that way decades. What about my City Costa mesa….Cost a mesa? This story was paper vs. plastic. Yeah in that there MUST have been some racial slur….
For all you people who wonder if this is a priority, I ask you to volunteer one day this week to clean up a local beach, highway, park, etc. Then tell me that plastic bags aren’t a huge problem. Volunteer at a marine mammal rescue center to find seals who have choked to death on plastic bags, and then tell me they aren’t a huge problem.
And the SF Supes tried the carrot approach with the grocers, and it was a complete failure.
It’s Gustavo not Tavo Luis.
You should watch it. Some may think you are demeaning or insulting the fine chap.
May we suggest a course in anthropology? At least THINK about it.
Ciao.