UPDATE: 9:20am | Los Angeles County made headlines a few weeks ago by approving a ban on plastic bags in unincorporated cities across the county. Next week, Long Beach could be headed in the same direction.

Second District City Councilmember Suja Lowenthal announced during a press conference at the State Capitol in Sacramento yesterday that she has proposed a plastic bag ban for the city of Long Beach, and the item will be on the agenda for the City Council’s December 7 meeting. The item is co-sponsored by councilmembers Robert Garcia and Gary DeLong.

“As an elected representative whose district includes the mouth of the Los Angeles River and adjacent beaches, I see firsthand, the negative impact of plastic bags on our city,” Lowenthal said, at the event promoting restriction of single-use bags across the state.

“What starts out as litter on the street 40 miles away from Long Beach becomes marine debris half buried on our beaches, floating in a few feet of water off our shores and catching on our marina docks and boats.”

The agenda item proposes that the City Attorney and City Manager review the Environmental Impact Report (EIR) used by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors in their recent ruling, and draft a near-duplicate ordinance for Long Beach. Key elements of the ruling include:

  • Bans plastic carryout bags at all supermarkets and other grocery stores, convenience stores, food marts, pharmacies and drug stores, while requiring stores that provide recyclable paper carryout bags to impose a charge of ten (10)  cents to a customer to cover reasonable costs associated with the ordinance.
  • Paper bags must be made from a minimum of 40% post-consumer, recycled content.
  • An exemption for those customers who are participating either in the California Supplemental Food Program for Women, Infants and Children or the Supplemental Food Program.
  • A start date for compliance with the ordinance of July 1 2011 for larger stores (as defined in the County’s ordinance) and January 1, 2012 for all others, allowing the City of Long Beach and stores an opportunity to provide employee training and outreach.

The item also requests that City staff develop a public education campaign for affected businesses and residents.

“Long Beach spends millions of dollars every year and countless staff and volunteer hours, cleaning up marine debris that includes a great deal of plastic bags,” Lowenthal said on Monday. “Funding and hard work that could be put to better use in our community.”

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At right, a rainstorm stirs up trash and debris stuck in a boom along the Los Angeles River in 2009.

3:55pm, November 17 | A recent ban on single-use plastic bags in Los Angeles County will not have immediate effects in most local cities, including Long Beach, but could create a guideline if and when the city attempts to create a similar law.

The ban approved by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors yesterday immediately affects only unincorporated parts of the county, but larger cities may use the Environmental Impact Report to frame bans of their own instead of having to produce costly EIRs independently.

“For us to do our own EIR, the cost would have been prohibitive,” said 2nd District Councilmember Suja Lowenthal in an interview today. Lowenthal has been a vocal proponent of local bans on single-use plastic bags, and said that she and supporters had planned to piggy-back on a study done by the city of Santa Monica, but won’t need to now that the County has made one available.

“That’s what I see as an immediate benefit for Long Beach,” she said.

In a city known for the trash pollution that flows down the Los Angeles River and ends up visibly plaguing local shores and beaches, a citywide ban would likely attract significant support. On the other hand, opponents argue, a ban could place unfair costs on local mom-and-pop stores and low-income consumers. There’s also the chance that lawsuits begin to pop up, as has happened with a similar ban in San Francisco.

Lowenthal has provided updates to the Council on the possibility of pursuing a citywide ban as recently as this past June, and she plans to provide a new update soon and would like to move forward with an ordinance.

“The bottom line is the environmental cost to the convenience we’re trying to preserve just far outweighs the benefits,” Lowenthal said. “We think we’re getting something for free but we’re paying for it in other ways.”

The City of Long Beach doesn’t have an official position on the ban, but supports ideas to reduce trash and the cost of clean-up.

Tom Modica, Long Beach’s director of government affairs and strategic initiatives, testified during the hearing yesterday that the City of Long Beach spent upwards of $20 million to clean and install anti-pollution measures along the L.A. River in recent years.

“These costly installations could have been averted to be spent on other types of projects if all of us instituted basic behavior changes, such as moving toward reusable bags,” Modica told the County Board of Supervisors.

Lowenthal says that she would like to set the wheels in motion soon for an upcoming ordinance. Long Beach residents should expect to see the issue popping up in Long Beach City Council meetings soon.

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