Da bag ban

Earlier this week, Los Angeles became the largest city in America to ban single-use plastic shopping bags. The ban will go into effect for large stores Jan. 1 and for all other stores July 1, 2014. Single-use paper bags were not banned, but customers who don’t bring their own reusable bags when they shop will have to pay 10 cents for each paper bag they need.

According to one story on the decision, "There is good financial reasoning behind the ban. Only five percent of single use plastic bags are recycled every year across the state and California municipalities spend almost $25 million a year to collect and throw away plastic bags that litter the streets and clog storm drains. Currently there are almost two billion plastic shopping bags and 400 million paper bags are distributed every year in Los Angeles."

The action by the Los Angeles Council, which enacted the ban on an 11-1 vote, came a week after two Dallas City Council committees were briefed on a ordinance proposed by Dwaine Caraway to ban both single use plastic and paper bags in Dallas. It’s not that Caraway is some sort of born-again environmentalist (even he admits he was the last person in Dallas to embrace recycling), but he’s laying the foundation for his mayoral campaign should incumbent Mike Rawlings decide not to seek a second term in two years, a time when term limits will force Caraway off the council.

Not that I fault Caraway for his actions. His goal is a sound one, although he should include Styrofoam containers in his ordinance as well. But some of his methods display his usual madness. His biggest mistake is insisting corporate sponsors, such as Coca-Cola , provide consumers reusable shopping bags free of charge. He doesn’t want to have consumers paying for them.

The way it appears, Caraway thinks only grocery stores pack their products in place plastic shopping bags. And even if that bit of lunacy was true, I doubt Coke is going to foot the bill for reusable shopping bags when the plastic containers their own products come in are coming under increasing attacks from environmentalists. Plus, if I was Tom Thumb, Kroger, Wal-Mart, etc., I would want my own logo on the bags — it’s called marketing.

Plus, what corporate sponsor is going to pay for the plastic bags used by such retail outlets as the Container Store, the Vitamin Shoppe and (ha! ha!) Condoms to Go, to name just three among thousands?

If Caraway has any hopes of passing his ban, he’s got to drop the idea of insisting that corporate sponsors pay for the reusable bags.

Of course, I’m not sure Caraway can get the pro-business council to buy into his ban idea even without the corporate sponsorship idea. While his proposed ordinance did seem to be greeted favorably by the Quality of Life Committee (even by committee chair Linda Koop who single handedly killed the last such proposed ordinance), it seemed to face a more hostile reaction from the Transportation and Environment Committee later the same day.

I still maintain that if the Dallas City Council wants to take a first-strike action to help the environment it should pass an ordinance that would not only prove the council was serious about all this "green stuff," but would also save taxpayers tens of thousands dollars annually as well as demonstrate unflinching support for a product the city itself fosters on all its citizens. That would be an ordinance prohibiting city funds be used for the purchase of water in plastic bottles. Take the first solo yourself, Dallas City Council, before you force others to sing your tunes.