Heal the Bay Blog

The City of Calabasas joined the rapidly growing group of cities and municipalities fighting against plastic bag litter by enacting a ban on single-use plastic bags on February 2, 2011.

Like the recent bans in Santa Monica, and LA County, the ban will prohibit supermarkets, large pharmacies and convenience food marts from distributing plastic bags. Paper bags can be sold for 10¢ each, as long as they are made of at least 40% recycled material.

As in other bans, exceptions are made for restaurants selling take-out food and drink.

The rising tide of cities that are enacting their own bans against plastic bags gives all of us in the environmental community hope. Every day we hear of new cities, countries and counties around the world banning plastic bags.

While the fight is far from over, Calabasas’ brave decision last night brings us one step closer to a world free from plastic bags.

Read more about the decision at kpcc.org.

Check out this link to Van Jones’ talk on the increasing impacts that plastic has on poor communities. Jones is an environmental advocate and attorney who spent the early part of his career fighting for equal rights for people of color, particularly African Americans.

In 2007 he founded an organization called Green for All, dedicated to building an environmentally friendly economy that would lift people out of poverty.  He also briefly served in President Obama’s White House Council on Environmental Quality.

In this clip, Jones describes how the production, use and disposal of plastics disproportionately harms poor people. Poverty in and of itself limits choices, making it difficult for people who are poor to purchase “safe” plastics, and making them more vulnerable to unsafe practices in jobs manufacturing plastics.

Mark Gold attended the TED conference at which Jones gave this speech, and you can read more about his impressions in the Spouting Off blog.

Watch Van Jones’ inspiring, and quite thoughtful, speech at ted.com. 

On January 20, the City of Los Angeles Bureau of Sanitation will hold an informational meeting on the low impact development ordinance. 

This landmark regulation will help cut down on the amount of polluted runoff that reaches our beaches by requiring new and redevelopment projects to capture rainwater on site, allowing it to filter into the ground and recharge local groundwater supplies.  To learn about the ordinance, which was passed in Dec 2010, members of the public can attend the meeting.

For more information, visit lastormwater.org.