OAN Staff Brooke Mallory
4:56 PM – Monday, September 23, 2024
Californians will no longer have the option to choose between paper or plastic shopping bags at the register when they check out from grocery stores, thanks to a new measure that was signed into law on Sunday by Governor Gavin Newsom.
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Supermarkets and other food retailers were previously prohibited from selling thin plastic shopping bags in California, but customers could still buy bags made of a thicker plastic that was said to be both recyclable and reusable.
Legislators in the state approved the new bill last month. It will outlaw plastic shopping bags altogether, starting in 2026. Customers will now only be asked whether they would like a paper bag if they don’t bring their own.
Meanwhile, Encinitas-based Democrat Catherine Smith Blakespear, who is currently serving in the California State Senate, argued that Californians are not recycling or reusing plastic bags. She cited state research that reported, from 8 pounds per year in 2004 to 11 pounds per year in 2021, each person was trashing an increasing number of plastic shopping bags.
The Democrat official also went on to say that the previously enacted bag ban did not lower the total amount of plastic that was used.
2014 saw the passage of a statewide ban on plastic bags by the California Legislature. Voters later approved the measure in a referendum held in 2016.
“We are literally choking our planet with plastic waste,” Blakespear said in February.
The environmental advocacy group Environment America Research & Policy Center also announced that twelve states, including California, have “already implemented some kind of statewide ban on plastic bags.”
The new law, according to the California Public Interest Research Group, ultimately “satisfies the original bag ban’s aim,” as of Sunday.
“Plastic bags create pollution in our environment and break into microplastics that contaminate our drinking water and threaten our health,” said the group’s director, Jenn Engstrom. “Californians voted to ban plastic grocery bags in our state almost a decade ago, but the law clearly needed a redo. With the Governor’s signature, California has finally banned plastic bags in grocery checkout lanes once and for all.”
James Golden, also known by his pseudonym “Bo Snerdley,” commented on the news of the plastic bag ban. Golden is a talk radio producer, call screener, and radio host who is best known for working with The Rush Limbaugh Show.
“Democrats are Democrats. They won’t ban criminals from coming in to this country – but they will damn sure ban plastic bags and straws,” Golden posted on X.
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