USA – California stemming tide of plastic bags

On July 1, California will become America‘‘s first state to initiate a mandatory recycling programme to cut down on its mounds of plastic bags.



The Sacramento Bee reports that under legislation – Assembly Bill 2449 – and signed into law by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last year, supermarkets, pharmacies and other major retail outlets must provide recycling bins to make it easier for customers to recycle their bags.



Many California supermarkets and retailers — including Safeway, Raley‘‘s, Ralphs, Whole Foods supermarkets and Wal-Mart — have already made plastic-bag recycling bins available in anticipation of the new law.



The effort is being hailed by plastic-bag manufacturers, who say the recycling effort is reducing a glut of bags and providing a reservoir of plastic to remanufacture into other products. For example, recycled bags are melded with wood shavings to make weather-resistant lumber products.



Under the law, California will require supermarkets, pharmacies and other stores using plastic bags to make the recycling bins available if the stores have more than 10,000 square feet of retail space and $2 million or more in annual sales.



The legislation, however, doesn‘‘t require consumers to recycle their plastic bags. Nor does it pay them for recycling. Once plastic grocery bags were touted as an alternative to paper bags and the destruction of trees needed to produce them. But the bags, which don‘‘t decompose in landfills, are piling up. Amid complaints over the garbage they create, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in March voted to ban the use of non-biodegradable plastic bags from supermarkets and other large retailers.



"When the industry moved from predominately paper bags to plastic bags, it was thought that it was saving paper materials and trees," said Margo Brown, chairwoman of the California Integrated Waste Management Board, which regulates state recycling and garbage collection programs. "But it has resulted in a huge litter problem throughout the state and uncontrollable debris that just blows in the wind at landfills, at beaches and roadsides."



The state agency is encouraging consumers to use reusable products, such as canvas bags, for trips to the grocery store.