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San Francisco Plastic Bag Reduction Ordinance Facts
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San Francisco Plastic Bag Reduction Ordinance summary bulletsMarch 2007
WHY?
Plastic bags consume scarce resources and create pollution littering streets, beaches, trees and waterways.
Plastic bags are perceived as disposable and are an impediment to San Francisco's 75% landfill diversion by 2010 and zero waste by 2020.
Plastic bags are difficult & costly to recycle � it costs more to process and recycle plastic bags than other items like aluminum. More on why recycling doesn't work here.
San Francisco uses an estimated 180 million plastic grocery bags a year with less than 1% being recycled.
Previous measures taken by the city to curb plastic bag consumption (e.g. retailers managed their own recycling efforts) have largely failed.
San Francisco spends millions each year for plastic bag cleanup and related costs .
By switching to the compostable bags the city will be conserving 430,000 gallons of oil used to make traditional bags � the equivalent of keeping 140,000 cars off the street for a day. (Jared Blumenfeld, director of San Francisco's Department of the Environment as reported by Christian Science Monitor)
According to the Ordinance, plastic shopping bags in the U.S. account for the felling of over 14 million trees, the use of over 12 million barrels of oil, as well as the death of over 100,000 marine animals from plastic entanglement.
WHAT / HOW?
Ordinance is designed to reduce the detrimental environmental impact of non-compostable plastic bags and non-recyclable paper bags by (1) prohibiting the distribution of such bags as checkout bags, and (2) imposing a range of graduated penalties for stores that violate the Ordinance.
Ordinance requires compostable plastic, recyclable paper and/or reusable bags be offered at point of sale in San Francisco stores.
Retailers responsible are grocery stores (gross sales of $2 million or more) and pharmacies with 5 or more city locations (but excluding those within hospitals).
Violators are fined $100-$500 for infractions.
Ordinance goes into effect in 6 months for grocery stores and 1 year for pharmacies.
Click here to read the full text of the San Francisco Plastic Bag Reduction Ordinance (03.22.07)
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