Single-use plastic bags pose a serious threat to the health of our environment. Plastic bags take up to 10-20 years just to break into smaller pieces, but like all plastic items, plastic bags will never fully breakdown. There is nothing naturally occuring in our environment that can break plastic polymers down. That means every plastic bag you've ever used will be on this Earth forever!

Please sign the Single-Use Plastic Bag Petition in order to show support for Assembly Bill 68, which would require large grocery stores and convenience stores to charge a 25 cent fee for plastic and paper bags! Save Our Shores will take your signatures to the City of Santa Cruz in order to encourage our City to support AB 68. By visiting the Heal The Bay website, you can also write a letter to Julia Brownley, author of AB 68, in order to thank her for her efforts to try and pass this Bill.

AB 68 will not only greatly reduce plastic bag litter in our oceans but will redirect funds back to our communities to go toward litter abatement, zero waste programs, and reusable bag giveaway programs.  AB 68 will offer a uniform, statewide approach to combat single-use bag litter. AB 68 would not only charge a fee for plastic bags but it would also require fees for the  single-use of paper and compostable bags.  As the most popular alternative to plastic, paper bags  themselves pose significant environmental impacts.  For example, evidence has shown that paper bags contribute to deforestation, greenhouse gas emissions, and waterborne wastes from the pulping and paper making process.  In addition, plastic bags marketed as “compostable” or “biodegradable” have not been proven to degrade in the marine environment. Rather these bags break down best if they are placed in a proper composting facility. Only a small number of cities currently support the infrastructure to collect and dispose of these types of bags properly.

Twenty countries and at least a dozen U.S. cities and counties have already taken action on single-use disposable bags.  In 2002, Ireland implemented a plastic bag fee and since the passage of this law, plastic bag consumption has decreased by over 90%.

Plastic bag litter is a huge problem nationwide, one that has continued to escalate due not only to our consumption patterns but also to the plastic industry giant, the American Chemistry Council (ACC). In California, as with states nationwide, the ACC has focused considerable resources towards fighting city fee and ban efforts. For example, the ACC sued to stop Oakland's bag ordinance, which in turn required Oakland to fund their own study to prove that banning plastic bags wouldn't negatively impact the environment. Now strapped for cash, the city of Oakland is trying to find ways to raise up to $100,000 to pay for this study.

California is currently stepping up efforts to preserve our environment with a statewide approach to relieving cities from the cost and effort of taking on the plastics industry one by one. California Assembly Bill 68, which would require a 25 cent fee on plastic and paper bags, is awaiting support from Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who in the past has focused his efforts on reducing litter in our oceans and bays a central issue. California has the ability to pass the most aggressive policy to reduce single-use bag consumption and the resulting pollution.  There is already growing support from cities across the state for this type of action. 

The most common concern raised by both residents as well as the plastics industry is that requiring fees on plastic bags will place an additional hardship on local economies that are already suffering. However, we are all paying for plastic bags already through local taxes to combat litter, and through hidden bag costs added to food and retail prices.

Save Our Shores supports AB 68, which would require a 25 cent fee on plastic and paper bags, as we consider this to be the first step to addressing the detrimental impacts plastic bags have on our environment. We support AB 68 because it takes a market-based approach to this problem that will ensure that consumers switch to more sustainable alternatives such as reusable bags.