I voted against the plastic bag ban based on the fact that it is not sound public policy and because it increases costs and regulations for the 1.5 million residents and the businesses who happen to reside in the county's unincorporated areas. The mandated 10-cent charge for
Replica Handbags represents a new tax on the consumer. At a time of economic uncertainty, this is not the appropriate time to impose additional regulations on businesses and an additional tax on consumers, many of whom are unemployed. We should instead educate consumers about the harm of illegally disposing their plastic bags so that they don't end up on our beaches and in our rivers, parks and landfills. Telling residents what bags they can and cannot use and how much they must be charged is Big Brother at its worst. Re "L.A. County passes ban on plastic grocery bags," Nov. 17 This doesn't go far enough. The next step is to get our incorporated cities to endorse this ban. Since state legislators failed to pass such an initiative earlier this year, it's going to be piecemeal. Complaining that this places a burden on poor people is not a valid argument. Many places have even given reusable bags away, so shop around. The L.A. City Council should have moved on its 2008 initiative to implement a ban by last July. That date has passed. Get with the program. There are two things wrong with the plastic bag ban imposed this week by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.
One is that charging a small fee for carryout plastic bags is a better solution than a ban. Fees have hugely reduced the use of the
Designer Replica Handbags in countries that charge them while offering an option to consumers. The other problem is that a patchwork of municipal laws is confusing to consumers and inefficient for large chain stores. Yet for both wrongs, the blame belongs not with the supervisors but with the Legislature, which pushed municipalities into this situation by passing one law that prohibited them from imposing fees on plastic bags until 2013, and rejecting another law that would have addressed this source of pollution on a statewide level. Given the Legislature's bumbling and the continued damage caused by carryout bags, the board did the best thing it could. If more large municipalities follow its lead — particularly the city of Los Angeles — the grocery industry, which supports a statewide solution, might join in prodding the Legislature into action. One way or another, California should follow the lead of the more than 30 countries — and many more local governments — that have acted against plastic bags, a list diverse enough to include Papua New Guinea, France, Botswana and China. People in these countries appear to be getting along just fine without the bags, which choke waterways, contribute to urban and wilderness litter, are the second-most-common source of trash on California's beaches and a key ingredient in the giant patches of plastic debris that are polluting the oceans.
California's consumers need to understand that
louis vuitton replicas are not as "free" as they seem; the cost is rolled into the price of the goods they buy. What's more, the state's taxpayers pay close to $25 million a year to rid streets, beaches, parks and waterways of the bags. Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich's objection to the county ban — that poor people won't be able to afford to pick up after their pets if they don't receive plastic bags from stores — is off base. Only carryout bags, which are responsible for most of the plastic bag trash, would be banned. The smaller bags in which people put their produce, and in which this newspaper is delivered, tend to be disposed of properly in recycling or trash bins and are not affected by the ban. The state tried beefing up recycling efforts for carryout plastic bags. It didn't work. Californians use more than 120,000 tons of the bags each year, and recycle 5% of them. Now the Legislature needs to take stronger action, through either a statewide fee or a statewide ban, to put an end to the growing patchwork of local regulations. The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to ban plastic grocery bags in areas of the county under its jurisdiction, endorsing a broadly worded measure that proponents hope could become a model for California. The ban, which goes beyond ordinances adopted in Malibu and San Francisco, most directly affects 1.1 million people who live outside the county's incorporated cities. But anyone shopping at stores in such areas would encounter the new rules.
Opponents suggested they might go to court to try to block the ban before the first phase takes effect in July, when 67 large supermarkets and pharmacies must stop providing disposable
lady dior price Chloe Paraty . By January 2012, the ban will cover 1,000 stores throughout the county. The ordinance also seeks to keep shoppers from turning to paper bags as an alternative by requiring stores to levy a 10-cent surcharge per paper bag. The goal, officials say, is to get people to adopt reusable bags made of cloth or durable plastic that can be wiped clean. An exception is being made for produce bags that keep raw vegetables and meats from being contaminated by other groceries. "Plastic bags are a pollutant. They pollute the urban landscape. They are what we call in our county urban tumbleweed," said Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky. He expressed particular concern about bags entering the ocean via the county's storm drain system, where he said "they end up threatening rare, valuable, marine life in our oceans and degrading one of this country's great environmental and economic resources: the Pacific Coast." The 3-1 vote was partisan, with the three Democrats—Yaroslavsky, Gloria Molina and Mark Ridley-Thomas—supporting it. It was opposed by Republican Michael D. Antonovich; Don Knabe jgxsqzgj56, also a Republican, was absent. Antonovich expressed concern that small, mom-and-pop shops will be at disadvantage financially, in part because they won't have access to volume discounts for paper and reusable bags. He also worried that low-income people would be forced to buy bags to pick up pet waste or carry their lunch.
"At a time of economic uncertainty, with a large number of businesses leaving our state and community, this would not be an appropriate time to impose this additional regulation," Antonovich said. In Los Angeles County alone, 6 billion
lady dior prezzo are used each year, an average of 1,600 bags per household a year. Government figures show that only about 5% are recycled. Mark Gold, president of the Santa Monica environmental group Heal the Bay, said previous county efforts to promote recycling of plastic bags at grocery stores was a failure. "You cannot recycle your way out of the plastic bag problem," Gold said. "The cost of convenience can no longer be at the expense of the environment." Let's say the duty-free shop is before security at the European airport — what then? You can have your purchase placed in what the TSA calls a "tamper-evident" bag, and it will be allowed through security in your carry-on if it meets U.S. requirements and you are on the aforementioned nonstop to LAX. Strange to say, California has been moving in the other direction. A 2006 bill prohibited municipalities from imposing fees on plastic shopping bags. A new bill, AB 2058 by Assemblyman Lloyd Levine (D-Van Nuys), would repeal that prohibition.
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