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SLO County IWMA seeking to ban plastic bags for produce

February 13, 2020

By CCT STAFF

Stores in San Luis Obispo County will be barred from providing single use plastic produce bags if proponents in favor of updating the Integrated Waste Management Authority’s plastic bag ban are successful. And with a  9-4 vote on Tuesday to amend the ordinance, it is likely the IWMA Board will move forward with the ban.

Three SLO County supervisors, Debbie Arnold, John Peschong, and Lynn Compton, opposed the ban, along with Paso Robles Councilman John Hamon. And while the three supervisors hold a majority on the SLO County Board of Supervisors, they do not hold a political majority on the IWMA board.

The board is composed of five county supervisors, seven city council representatives, and one special district representative.

If passed, the ban would prohibit the distribution of plastic produce storage bags countywide. Instead, grocery stores can provide paper bags for produce, at a cost of at least 10 cents each.

At Tuesday’s meeting, several speakers urged the board to ban single use plastic bags noting negative impacts on the environment. Opponents of the ban were concerned with the costs to businesses and consumers.

In April, IWMA staff plans to bring back an amended ordinance for board approval.


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OK so will the plastic wrapping around medical devices be next? That’s a single use. Or the plastic around pillows, bedding? Plastic bags over the clothes from the dry cleaners?


No – I know – it will be disposable diapers. And doggy poop bags. Can’t wait for that.


10

Anyone seen the plastic waste created by growers using plastic film as a mulch? Good place to start.


1

As the town of Tijuana dumps millions of gallons of untreated sewage year after year in the Pacific ocean, our state and local governments worry about an infinitesimal amount of plastic being added to our landfills. So glad more intelligent people are looking out for my well being. Also so glad the USMCA agreement proposed by Trump and passed by congress provides 250 million dollars to upgrade Tijuana’s sewage treatment plant.


My solution to this annoyance; buy ziplock bags and place my produce in those before going to the check stand. (upon produce consumption throwing in the trash – single use).


3

Election of Ellen Beraud and her ilk will only perpetuate this nonsense.


19

I see that the “comments” are all from the usual negative, ill informed and quick to condemn. So, have none of you heard of REUSABLE BAGS????? They have been around for literally DECADES now. Apparently you also have no knowledge of just how harmful the plastic bags actually are. I suggest you do a bit of research on that as well. There are several very informative documentaries, by the way. Not that you will care, since acquainting yourself with the facts of what you are commenting on might inhibit the pleasure you seem to get from insulting those who might actually have a clue.


The other, very real possibility is that you are paid by the fossil fuel industry to publish these antiquated and toxic “opinions” that were never actually based in factual accuracy to begin with.


REUSABLE BAGS. LOOK INTO IT.


-29

And for you…E Coli and possibly Hep. Use your head, this is happening with the basic reusable bags your using now.

“Reusable Shopping Bags: Safe? According to a joint food safety research report issued by researchers at the University of Arizona and Loma Linda University, reusable grocery bags can serve as a breeding ground for dangerous foodborne bacteria and pose a serious risk to public health”

Plastic Bags are the Healthier Option – for Families and the …www.bagtheban.com › learn-the-facts › health

If reusable bags aren’t sanitized properly after each use, they can harbor dangerous bacteria. Reusable bags are 300 percent higher than what is considered safe.


18

Why do you need to speculate on other posters motives? People are entitled to their opinions, but you seem to have the need to levy personal insinuations on them as a counter attack.


11

It also includes the bags used to put packs of meat in. You know, the packages that drip blood? The ones that will contaminate everything else with that? There is feces and urine all over our produce in addition form the workers in the filed. Why be forced to contaminate everything else in our grocery bags. You can go ahead and reuse the contaminated produce and meat bags. The rest of us will pass.


19

Clearly banning single use plastic is a health and financial assault on healthy eaters. Nine short sighted invasive do-good’er elected officials haven’t evaluated the collateral effects from a feasibility study (if there is one). Then there’s “Weights and Measures: Tare” where the grocer must subtract the extra weight of paper bags or the grocer is overcharging the consumer after they are collecting an extra 10cents which is a violation of law. Porous paper bags absorb humidity and will retain bacteria and pathogens more than sterilized plastic single use bags. The other questions arise around saran wrap on meat, which is single use. Is a manufacturer’s products exempt from the single use as they are single use such as: bagged lettuce, potato chips, frozen vegetables, lunch meat, cheese, bread, nuts and you name it? When I’m scooping nuts from the bulk bins into the grocer’s unsanitized paper bags that have been sitting on the floor in the back room am I safe because of their supposed cleanliness procedures? In an effort of full transparency, let the public see the full feasibility study that addresses all of the collateral effects (sitting on the balloon) versus the benefit of saving a few plastic bag sorters.


13

As soon as Bloomberg is President you won’t have to worry about potato chips. They will be banned with the Big Gulps.


15

And yet the one item that is always at the top of the list of items picked up on beach and other clean ups, cigarettes, is never talked about being banned. Why?, and when was the last time we heard produce bags were a top item from a cleanup day, never.


18

Cigarettes create tax revenue. Liberals love cigarettes for that reason.


8

We can all live without the big plastic grocery bags that were previously outlawed, but this new idea is a public health disaster. So you pick out a big wet head of leaf lettuce and instead of bagging it you do what? Put it into your filthy grocery cart, covered with baby snot from the last tyke who sat in it? Where it will get everything else wet and make a sloppy mess. Then you get to checkout and what do you do, put the naked lettuce on the filthy corona virus conveyor? Then the clerk and bagger get to handle the lettuce. Then you get home and put the naked lettuce in your dehydrating fridge, where it wilts. Then you eat it and get sick. Maybe you die.


The simple-minded greenies need to look at more than just their single pet point of view on stuff like this. Plastic grocery bags make no sense, but there are good reasons for produce bags. And it seems they have no good solution for us, only a prohibition. How about before they prohibit something they come up with a workable alternative?


43

It would be called absurd, except it will pass and will impact everyone. Is this a JPA which has legal authority to pass such madcap pie-in-the-sky crap regulations?


This sanctuary state is becoming beneath contempt, beneath vomit, led by whack job flakes in leadership, Newsom on down. . It holds natural beauty, five generations of our history, and little else. Idaho and Texas, here we come.


33

Unelected agencies like this are the latest scheme progressives have come up with to monkey with democracy. They’re given the power to legislate, but those affected — us — have no way to control them. Progressives don’t actually believe in democracy. They’re just about applying power everyplace they can.


26

Please don’t.


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