Forget It Jake, It's Baltimore - So BYOB

Bring Your Own Bag. It's not like Baltimore doesn't have plenty of problems to attend to. Da Sun, Bring your own bag: After pandemic delays, Baltimore’s ban on plastic bags takes effect Oct. 1 

Baltimore’s ban on plastic bags goes into effect starting next month, more than 15 years after city leaders first proposed a similar law.

Called the Comprehensive Bag Reduction Act, the rule affects grocery stores, restaurants and retailers. It applies to food and produce purchased in person, as well as through apps such as Instacart. Shops will need to charge customers at least 5 cents per paper bag, including a 1-cent fee that will be paid to the city.

Retailers need to report the number of paper bags used, starting next week, but have a month-long grace period before they need to start paying the penny fee. That money will go into the city’s general fund.

Originally set to begin in January, the ban was delayed amid the pandemic and now takes effect Oct. 1.

Mayor Brandon Scott held a news conference Wednesday in Harbor East near the waterfront’s Mr. Trash Wheel to remind residents of the change, which he touted as “improving the environment of our city.”

Heaven forfend they should do something about their leaky sewers and running gun battles. Baltimore Mayor: Hey, we should probably do something about all of these gang shootings (Jazz Shaw at Haut Hair).

While residents were demanding action, the Mayor, the City State’s Attorney, and the Police Chief didn’t have much to say that they hadn’t heard before. And, of course, none of them were ready to take any blame for their own policies failing to keep people alive. One of the residents noted that when one of the Fire Department’s regular assignments is to wash down the blood on the sidewalks, something has gone very wrong indeed.

The Wombat has Rule 5 Sunday: Gwen Verdon up and awaiting your digital pleasure. 

 

WuFlu Sickens Plastic Bag Bans, Virtue Signalers Hurt Worst

Jessica Alba

Paper Or Plastic? Bans On Single-Use Bags Tossed Out Amid Fears Of Virus Spread

Reusable grocery tote bags across Massachusetts are idle these days, stuffed in the backs of vehicles and hanging on door knobs in homes.

That's because last week Gov. Charlie Baker issued a new public health order: "From now on reusable bags are prohibited and all regulations on plastic bag bans will be lifted."

Several New England states have also temporarily banned reusable bags or delayed implementing or enforcing new restrictions on single-use bags.

Olivia Wilde

The goal is to limit the spread of the coronavirus in food stores and pharmacies. But the scientific evidence supporting the prohibition of reusables is far from conclusive.

Over the past two years, 139 Massachusetts municipalities have instituted a variety of restrictions on single-use bags. A move to pass a statewide ban has failed in 10 legislative seasons.

The Massachusetts Food Association, which represents supermarkets and grocers, has supported a uniform statewide ban for environmental reasons but right now, it's pro-paper and plastic.

Emma Roberts

"During an emergency crisis, they're probably safer than reusable bags," says Brian Houghton, the association's senior vice president for policy. "There have been studies we've seen by the CDC and others that there are surfaces that this virus can live on."

But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention offers no specific recommendations about reusable bags and coronavirus. (Though they do say you should regularly wash reusable bags to prevent the spread of food-borne disease.)

Georgia tries to use reusable bags (peer pressure is a powerful thing), but the last time she went to the grocery store, she came back with the back of the car full of the old one use plastic bags. It seems the local store won't allow reusable bags in the era of WuFlu.

The Wombat has Rule Five Monday: Honor Blackman, RIP up on time at The Other McCain.

Having Solved All Their Bigger Problems . . .

Baltimore bans bags! Baltimore’s Bag Ban: What Will It Do? What’s Next?

Eight attempts at a Baltimore plastic bag ban have come and gone since 2006. Today, nine times proved to be the charm. This morning, Mayor Jack Young signed the Comprehensive Bag Reduction Bill into law. The signing drew dozens of advocates, city officials, press, and community members together.

In Baltimore, plastic bags are everywhere. They fly down our streets, get caught in trees, clog our storm drains and streams, and choke out plants and animals. They cause even more problems worldwide. That’s why Blue Water Baltimore championed this bill.

While plastic bags are just one source of trash, bans like this provide upstream solutions that protect our environment and help build toward a zero waste future. Baltimore now joins Montgomery County, Howard County, and other Maryland jurisdictions in banning plastic bags.

I know, two "Having solved all their bigger problem" posts in one day, but it seemed necessary.

What will the bag ban do? When does it start?

• Plastic bags will no longer be given out during checkout at grocery stores, restaurants, gas stations, and other stores.
• Instead, customers can either bring their own reusable bags or pay five cents for other bags like paper.
• One cent of the fee will go to the City and four cents will go to retailers to cover the costs of alternative bags.
• Some products are exempt from the bill, including meats, prescriptions, and newspapers.
• The bill goes into effect a year from today (January 13, 2021).

Now what? What’s next?

Today, Delegate Brooke Lierman of Baltimore is introducing a bill to ban plastic bags statewide during the 2020 legislative session.

Delegate Lierman’s proposed bill would also create a working group to research other single-use plastics, such as food utensils and water bottles.

A key part of the bill includes the creation of a working group. The group’s charter is to study the impact these types of plastic bans have on low-income Marylanders. Their findings will help guide policies that advance environmental justice and social equity.

Earlier versions of Baltimore City’s bag ban bill exempted SNAP and WIC users from the five cent fee; this would’ve taken the financial burden off those least able to afford it. Unfortunately, city council members removed the exemption. As Maryland considers a statewide ban on plastic bags this legislative session, environmental protection and equity must go hand-in-hand.

Baltimore’s leadership on banning plastic bags is a major victory: after the city banned polystyrene foam in 2018, a statewide ban in 2019 soon followed. Let’s hope that Baltimore’s leadership today leads to a statewide ban during the 2020 legislative session.

Meanwhile, no sign that the murder epidemic in Baltimore is abating 12 shot, five dead, in single day of shootings in Baltimore, and overdose deaths remain "staggeringly high" and continue to rise, not to mention, SEX AND YOUR CITY STD map ranks Baltimore as worst US city for sexually transmitted diseases

Bottles, Bags, and Straws Banned

Bag ban

Why Do Environmentalists Seem Determined To Torment, Rather Than Convince? "From plastic bag bans to plastic straw bans to bans on shampoo bottles in hotels to plastic water bottles in airports, California is adopting supposedly environmental policies that won't save the environment but will piss off residents."

Grocery shopping had never been one of my favorite activities, but it never used to be as cumbersome as it is now. I'd fill up the cart with food, wait in line at the check-out counter and kibitz with the cashier as the bagger loaded up—and double-bagged—my groceries. Now, the lines are much slower because bagging has become an ordeal thanks to the "Earth-protecting" plastic-bag ban the state had passed a few years ago.

Consider what happens now. Store employees can't simply place your food in the needed bags. They have to ask how many bags shoppers want to buy. "As many as needed," I always say, given that I don't really care if the $150 transaction costs another buck. It's basically just another tax we pay to live in a former paradise. But that's not how it works now. The employees dispense bags parsimoniously. Who can blame cashiers given the guff they might get if they sell someone an unnecessary bag?

Water bottle ban

This column was first published in the Orange County Register.

Bagging used to be an artform, where baggers carefully separated, say, the eggs from the bottle of Chivas Regal. Now they cram as much stuff as possible in a single bag. Heaven forbid you get stuck behind someone who pulls out a trove of bacteria-laden, reusable sacks. I put the new thick bags they sell right into the garbage, whereas I used to reuse the lightweight "single use" bags to pick up dog poo and line the bathroom waste baskets. Now I have to order those thinner ones online.

This has not improved the environment one iota, even though it has added to our daily annoyance. There always was plenty of evidence to debunk the push for the bag ban. Those bags comprised an infinitesimal portion of the waste stream.

But grocery stores supported it because, well, they can now charge for something they previously gave away. You can always count on a coalition of true believers and profit-seekers—the "Baptists and bootleggers" from Prohibition lore—to unite behind such edicts. And voters, who are easily swayed by uplifting ballot nonsense, rejected a referendum that would have overturned the ban. Those who promote these laws don't view shoppers' inconvenience as a downside. They often view it as a self-healing and education process.

"If we live in an environment that's wounded … it hurts us, chipping away at our health and creating injuries at a physical, psychological, and spiritual level," wrote Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Wangari Maathai in a 2011 Huffington Post column. "(I)f we help reclaim or save what is lost…the planet will help us in our self-healing and indeed survival."

Shampoo bottle ban

I'm not suggesting that California's progressive lawmakers sit around the campfire, venerating crystals and reading poetry about the wounded Earth. But they aren't doing much research before proposing an endless stream of these "let's annoy the public" proposals. They certainly aren't looking at cost-benefit analyses, either. For instance, Gov. Gavin Newsom recently signed Assembly Bill 1162, which bans larger hotel operators from giving out those little, convenient bottles of shampoo, conditioner and hand lotion.

"The proliferation of plastic waste is having a devastating impact on our environment and overwhelming landfills," said Assemblyman Ash Kalra (D–San Jose), the bill's author. That may be true, but it has virtually nothing to do with hotel guests. "What activists fail to mention is that approximately 60 percent of plastic trash in the ocean comes from just five countries – China, Indonesia, The Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam—which have notoriously inefficient waste management systems," explained Billy Binion in Reason. "America, meanwhile, contributes less than 1 percent."

Plastic straw ban

It would be nice if, for a change, lawmakers who promote these ideas at least wrestled with such rebuttals or with the latest facts. Recycling, for instance, is a great idea—provided there's an actual market for the recyclables. But as the Orange County Register reported in May, a declining percentage of trash is recycled despite all the new recycling mandates the state keeps passing. The article's headline notes that, "Your recyclables are heading to the dump." I pondered that as I stood over a multi-bin recycling center at the airport trying to figure out which portion of my trash should go into which portion of the container.

But at least we can learn about our wastefulness in the process. Regarding shampoo bottles, Kalra argues the ban will "increase consumer awareness of our use of plastic." He essentially admits that a main reason for the law is what this skeptic argued above: to reform and educate us. The California Hotel and Lodging Association supports the measure, but that's not a surprise. Hotels will save money, while the rest of us bring along contraband bottles or use those big dispensers—and hope that no previous guest has tampered with them.

Earth to environmentalists: Improving the environment is a noble calling, but you'll have far more success incentivizing it rather than tormenting us.

If you're going to take someones freedom away, it's easier to do it in baby steps. It's like boiling a frog. They're constantly testing the limit of what we will tolerate before we rebel.

Linked at Pirate's Cove in the weekly Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup and links. The Wombat has Rule 5 Sunday: Sean Young up as usual at The Other McCain.

Annapolis and Baltimore Compete to Virtue Signal

Annapolis Styrofoam ban to begin in September

The prohibition on expanded polystyrene, or EPS, foam food service products is expected to begin in Annapolis.

These products, commonly referred to by the trademarked name Styrofoam, are prohibited for use and sale at food service businesses and grocery and convenience stores in the city of Annapolis as of Sept. 1.

Earlier this year, the city mailed letters to all food service businesses and grocers to begin using up the product in order to be in compliance. The grace period ran from Oct. 22, 2018, to Sept. 1. After Sept. 1, businesses using EPS foam for food service will be fined $100 for the first offense and $200 for subsequent violations.

But not to be out virtue signaled Baltimore bag ban would help kick plastic problem

We’re thrilled that the Baltimore City Council is considering a ban on single-use plastic bags. This legislation would reduce the use of plastic and shift consumer behavior toward reusable bags. Paper and compostable bags would still be available, but with a 5-cent surcharge proven effective to incentivize the use of reusables. Hundreds of cities and states across the country have passed similar measures, and some national chains and local businesses have voluntarily phased out or committed to phase out plastic bags and other single-use plastics. Baltimore has been a leader on reducing plastic pollution through our ban on foam food packaging, and now is the time to ban single-use plastic bags.

You might wonder how we could go on without something as ubiquitous in daily life as plastic bags, but it’s important to remember that we don’t need them. Plastic bags weren’t introduced in this country until the 1970s. We managed without them before, and we can manage again. And we should. Nothing we use for a few minutes should be able to pollute our communities for hundreds of years.

Even though plastic bag bans lead to greater sickness rates and death, due to bacterial contamination on the reusable bags.

It's not like Baltimore doesn't have bigger problems.

The Wombat has Rule 5 Sunday: Katie Williams ready at The Other McCain.

Virginia Bails on Bag Bill, Tries to Ban Free Floating Balloons

Plastic-bag bill dies in state Senate

The desire of localities across Northern Virginia to tax single-use plastic bags has died its annual death in Richmond.

A measure by state Sen. Chap Petersen (D-Fairfax) to impose a 5-cent-per-bag tax on customers in retail outlets was “passed by indefinitely” – sent to a kind of legislative purgatory – on a 14-1 vote in the Senate Committee on Finance.

Funds raised from the proposed legislation would have been earmarked for efforts to protect the Chesapeake Bay watershed.

Had Petersen’s measure made it out of the Senate, it would have faced an uphill climb in the House of Delegates. All previous efforts to either impose a bag tax, or allow localities to do so, died in past sessions of the General Assembly.

While I encourage those who want to to use reusable bags, I don't think it needs to be made mandatory. In some cases, reusable bags actually increase the chance of illness (being a fine way to spread and breed microbes). We use them, but we're not fanatics about it.

Today we dropped into a grocery store after exercise class, and Georgia did not have bags in the back of my car. To bag about 7 items took the checker 3 bags. Utterly unnecessary.

In other Virginia nanny state news, a Virginia lawmaker proposes ban on releasing balloons into atmosphere

A Virginia lawmaker says banning the release of helium balloons into the air could help save wildlife on land and in the water.

Balloons are fouling the state's beaches and can be deadly to wildlife, says Republican Sen. Jeff McWaters of Virginia Beach, who is sponsoring a bill to prohibit releasing lighter-than-air balloons into the atmosphere.

His bill would ban the intentional release of balloons inflated with helium or another lighter-than-air gas and require more than five minutes' contact with air or water to degrade.

Violations would carry a civil penalty of $5 per balloon, with proceeds going into the Litter Control and Recycling Fund.

The measure would supersede an existing law that bans release of 50 or more balloons in an hour.
McWaters' bill cleared the Agriculture, Conservation and Natural Resources Committee on a 9-6 vote Thursday and is headed to the full Senate.
. . .
Mark Swingle, director of research and conservation at the Virginia Aquarium and Marine Science Center in Virginia Beach, called balloons an insidious form of litter that can travel great distances to remote stretches of Virginia's shoreline. A recent survey found as many as 150 balloons per mile of beach, he said.

Ed Clark, president of the Wildlife Center of Virginia in Waynesboro, said sea turtles are especially vulnerable to deflated balloons because they mistake them for jellyfish. "They ingest them, and that's the end of them," he said.

In addition, Clark said, balloons are often attached to nylon or plastic strings that are slow to degrade, and birds get entangled in them.

While I occasionally find loose balloon floating on the Bay or washed up on the beach, I look askance at the estimate of 150 per mile of beach. I've never seen anything approaching that. While these balloons do pose a mild threat to wildlife, I'd like to see some reliable estimate of the mortality from balloons compared to from other sources. I would guess it's trivial at best.

And what about enforcement. How are you going to detect and slap your $5 per balloon tax on the three year olds that inevitably let go of their balloon and start wailing about it?

A Bag Bill for Baltimore?

Fee on plastic bags distributed in Baltimore wins committee approval

Customers who shop in Baltimore would have to pay 5 cents for each plastic bag at supermarkets and other merchants under legislation that's making its way through the City Council.

A key council committee voted Wednesday to send the measure to the full council, where it is expected to receive a vote Monday.

A majority of City Council members support the bill. And Councilman James B. Kraft, the bill's sponsor, who has spent a decade pushing for the measure as way to reduce litter, said he is confident that the fee will pass.

But several council members raised concerns about a new fee after Tuesday's election, in which Republican Larry Hogan won the gubernatorial race. Hogan had put a spotlight on what he characterized as high taxes and government-imposed fees.

According to this article, Maryland ranks 41st out of 50 (50 being the highest)  for total state taxes with number 50 being New York. There's still room to grow! Surprisingly enough, the state of Maryland rejected a bag tax back in 2013.

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, who previously said she would sign legislation imposing plastic bag fees, softened her position Wednesday. She said her support depends on how the final bill is crafted.

"I will always have concerns about imposing more taxes and fees," the mayor said, when asked about whether she would support the bill. "I had to do a significant amount of that in order to climb out of the Great Recession, so I'm always cautious about that. But until I see the latest iteration, I can't say."
. . .
Holton said she could be persuaded to support the measure by using the revenue it generates to offset other expenses city taxpayers shoulder, including projects aimed at cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay.

Under Kraft's bill, retailers would keep a penny and a half for each plastic bag to offset their costs. The rest — an estimated $1.5 million in the first year — would go to city coffers.

Kraft said he wants the money raised to clean up the harbor and city parks, though he said the measure isn't intended to be a money maker but to discourage the use of plastic bags.

"My goal is that we don't make any money out of this because if people don't use the bags, we won't collect the fees," he said. "It's a behavior change."

Plastic bags used to carry fresh produce and meat, dairy, prescriptions and prepared foods would be exempt. Retailers that fail to charge for the plastic bags would face a fine, as well as interest and penalties for late payments.

We use reusable grocery bags, well mostly, when their in the right car when we find ourselves at the store. However, a reusable bag has to be reused many times to be an improvement from an energy and cost point of view. Most of them get lost somehow before that point, so the actual net benefit of an outright bag ban is probably negative. They also lead to more shoplifting and greater rates of gastrointestinal disease, but if it makes you feel better about the environment, enjoy the glow (and diarrhea).

Now a tax. That's a different story. That's a pure money maker for the city, and a serious hassle and cost for all the shops and shoppers in Baltimore. But I don't care. I don't shop in Baltimore.

You do know that plastic bags can be recycled into fuel, don't you?

Focusing Like a Moonbeam on the Big Issues

California becomes first in nation to enact statewide plastic bag ban

Gov. Jerry Brown on Tuesday signed the nation's first statewide ban on single-use plastic bags at grocery and convenience stores, driven to action by pollution in streets and waterways.

A national coalition of plastic bag manufacturers immediately said it would seek a voter referendum to repeal the law, which is scheduled to take effect in July 2015.

Under SB270, plastic bags will be phased out of checkout counters at large grocery stores and supermarkets such as Wal-Mart and Target starting next summer, and convenience stores and pharmacies in 2016. The law does not apply to bags used for fruits, vegetables or meats, or to shopping bags used at other retailers. It allows grocers to charge a fee of at least 10 cents for using paper bags.

State Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Los Angeles, credits the momentum for statewide legislation to the more than 100 cities and counties, including Los Angeles and San Francisco, that already have such bans.

The law marks a major milestone for environmental activists who have successfully pushed plastic bag bans in cities across the U.S., including Chicago, Austin and Seattle.

"This bill is a step in the right direction -- it reduces the torrent of plastic polluting our beaches, parks and even the vast ocean itself," Brown said in a signing statement. "We're the first to ban these bags, and we won't be the last."

However, the benefits of the "Bag Ban" are largely illusory; to make environmentalists feel good:

Empirical work on the effects of a plastic bag ban on grocery and convenience stores in Los Angeles was undertaken in an NCPA study two years ago. This found that areas with the bag ban on average saw sales decline by 3.3 per cent over a one year period, compared with an average increase in sales of 3.4 per cent in areas without the ban. Of course, given that ours is a charge, not a ban, and is applied to all supermarkets across the country we might expect the distortive aggregate effect to be much smaller. Yet the government evidently thinks it will have a detrimental effect on some businesses, otherwise it would not have exempted small businesses and independent stores from the legislation.

Indeed, the most baffling part of this sort of legislation is its inconsistencies. If plastic bags are the thing we want fewer of, then why are some shops exempted? More importantly, if it is plastic per se we want less off, why are we only imposing charges on plastic bags? What about plastic pots and food containers? Will not imposing charges on the bags simply lead to adjustments to packaging to make the goods easier to carry in the first place?

In reality, it’s rare for the public discourse to seem to be concerned by plastic per se. Perhaps this is just because of the visual effects of plastic bag pollution. But one gets the sense that the anger surrounding their use is more to do with opposition to the casual consumption they represent, considered ‘vulgar’ by some.

Then there are the environmental trade-offs, of course. Since people still need some sort of means of carrying their shopping, we cannot only consider the humble plastic bag in isolation. One of the reasons why plastic bags are so cheap, for example, is precisely because they are extremely energy and water efficient to produce. For an equivalent amount of groceries, the NCAP study finds that production of paper bags consumes three times as much energy as plastic. Paper bags also produce substantially more landfill waste, whilst both paper bags and reusable bags lead to much higher greenhouse gas emissions than their plastic cousin.

In fact, an Environment Agency study found that cotton bags would need to be re-used over 100 times before they yielded net environmental benefits. But it found that cotton bags are only re-used around half that amount, making them worse than plastic on net for the environment. This is before considering the energy and water required to clean and maintain them, and the potential for negative health effects in relation to bacteria brought about by repeated use.

But it's worth forcing down the throats of all Californians if it makes environmentalists feel good about themselves.

Grocery Bag Ban Leads to Increased Theft

Plastic bag ban leads to nationwide increase in shoplifting rates

On Friday, New Jersey Democratic operative James Devine was arrested for attempting to snatch $22 worth of merchandise from a local ShopRite pharmacy. Devine tried to smuggle lettuce, shampoo and protein powder out of the store, perhaps trying to hide the fact that he was about to make the world’s most disgusting salad. To avoid detection, he stashed the goods in a reusable grocery bag.

What seems to be just another edition of Democrats doing dumb deeds actually represents a nationwide problem. Thanks to laws in several major cities banning the use of plastic carryout bags in retail stores, there has been a spike in shoplifting incidents over the past couple years, a trend that business owners, law enforcement officials and customers have duly noted.

In 2011, Washington D.C. enforced a reusable bag tax and officials became steadily more suspicious of shoppers’ activities.

“Since the fee was established last year, we have noticed customers using traditional bags, along with less traditional pieces such as backpacks, to not only transport items from the store, but to carry items throughout the store,” spokesman of the Advisory Neighborhood Commission of Washington D.C. Craig Muckle said in an interview with Washington City Paper.

This suspicion solidified into disturbing data a year later on the other side of the country. When a Seattle ordinance banning plastic bags took effect on July 2012, 21.1 percent of surveyed Seattle business owners said that the plastic bag ban led to an increase in shoplifting problems. Seattle’s Lake City Grocery Outlet, for instance, had thousands of dollars worth of goods stolen that year.

Never mind the fact of increased rates of gastrointestinal diseases, some even leading to death, because of the use of (nice opaque) reusable grocery bags.

Mind you, I'm not opposed to reusable grocery bags; I'm opposed to mandatory reusable grocery bags.  Bag Freedom!  But if store employees choose to check you more closely when you carry in reusable bags, that's a reasonable profiling based on the added risk.