Taxpayer Cost of Plastic Bags in California

Has plastic bag use gone down in California? The Plastic Bag Ban Law effective dates were July 1, 2015 and July 1, 2016 and then the law was suspended. But Proposition 67 was put before the voters in November 2016 and it passed and the law went into effect.

While reports may say that plastic bag use are down, in reality, I still pick up as many plastic bags on the beach pre- 2016. Take out food orders, ‘reusable plastic bags’, dog leavings, ziplock bags, and other packaged goods. In fact just today, I picked up 6 ‘Reusable bags’ at the beach, 3 cheaper versions and about 10 Take Out plastic bags. That does not even count the plastic bags in the trash cans. So are the cost going to go down?

Taxpayers pay for this. Not only do they pay at the checkout (10 cents per bag), they pay for the recycling, collection, machinery jams and those costs are estimated at 17 center per bag. Break that down to $88 per year per person for just plastic bags. If Californians use 19 Billion plastic bags a year, that equates to $3.23 billion to clean up plastic bags. Add in street sweeping, litter clean up, illegal dumping, cleaning up watersheds.

For anyone driving, check out the roadside and exit ramps and see if they think plastic bags have gone away.

Will the cost to taxpayers go down? 

• 19 billion plastic bags are used in California yearly. Using about 2 million barrels of oil (Pre Bag Ban)
• $25 Million California spent annually to landfill plastic bag.
• $43 Billion Plastic Pollution cost California’s Ocean Economy.  There is an estimated 408,000 jobs mostly in the tourism and recreation.
• $500 Million California spends in litter clean up, with between 8% to 25% attributable to plastic bags
• $1.7 billion spent in South California to meet Total Maximum Daily Loads for trashed in impaired waterways.
• $8.5 million each year to manage plastic bag litter in San Francisco pre bag ban.
• $1 Million San Jose spent every year to fix recycling machinery that jammed caused by Plastic Bags.
• 6x per day a recycling plant in Sacramento had to shut down to remove bags from machines (2013)
• $6.4 million The American Progressive Bag Alliance raised to fight the Plastic Bag Ban.

San Diego Plastic Bags

• 500 million single-use plastic bags used in San Diego. Estimated 95% of those plastic bags ended in landfills.
• $160,000 per year on litter cleanup costs in San Diego pre-bag ban.

The Good News

• 7.4% of beach litter in 2010 in California was plastic bags.
• 3.1% of beach litter in 2017 was attributed to plastic bags.
• San Jose results post bag ban: The storm drain systems are 89% cleaner and streets and creeks have been reported as 60% cleaner.  According to the City of San Jose, “all of the key indicators monitored by staff show downward trends in presence of single-use plastic bags in street, storm drain, and creek litter, and an upward trend in use of reusable bags by shoppers.”
• Los Angeles County  ban on single-use plastic bags with a 10- cent fee on recyclable paper bags,  resulted in a 94% reduction in single-use bag use. The cost per resident was estimated to be less than $4.00/year.
• San Jose, Santa Monica and Los Angeles County statistics from before and after the plastic bag bans. Before the bans, 75% of plastic bags used at stores were single use plastic bags, 17% of citizens didn’t use a bag, 5% used reusable bags and 3% used paper bags. After the bag ban: 45% of citizens used reusable bags, 39% didn’t use a bag and 16% used paper bags (Squarespace).
• Alameda County, officials reported finding 433 plastic bags, compared to 4,357 in 2010.
• Monterey County reported even better news, with volunteers discovering only 43 plastic bags while performing their clean-up efforts, compared to 2,494 in 2010.

Here is what I think, many people went out and purchased reusable bags. They do not take them into restaurants for take out orders, the don’t take them into liquor stores, they don’t take them into pharmacies and other retail establishments. Visitors and tourists do not travel with their reusable bags and therefore they take the plastic bags from establishments. The novelty will wear off and we will still have millions of plastic bags littering our environment.

Resources

• Sacramento Bag Ban 
• Taxpayer Cost of Plastic Bags 
• Bag Monster
• Californians Against Waste
• LA County River Clean up 
• Penn State: Plastic Bag Bans
• New York Government