PACKAGING: Cup/Bag Fee on Hold

(from the May 2003 issue of State Recycling Laws Update; Copyright 2003 Raymond Communciations, Inc.)

California Assembly Bill 586 (Koretz), the bill that would place a 2-cent fee on disposable bags and disposable cups, has been held in the Natural Resources committee.

Discussion at the last Interested Parties meeting at the California Integrated Waste Management Board (CIWMB) indicated this will be a two-year bill, as policy makers wrestle with marine debris issues. According to Johnnie Carlson at Californians Against Waste, marine debris and litter is a priority of his group for the next year, and he expects progress on this bill or some other similar bill in 2004.

The amended bill would exempt any disposable bag or cup that contains 40% post-consumer recycled content from the fee, and would prohibit companies from putting out ash trays in buildings where smoking is not permitted. Carlson notes that many paper bags will be exempt because they can meet the recycled content requirement.

The bill would raise about $400 million which would go to various agencies in the state to handle the problem of litter going into drainage systems.

Carlson pointed out that in some parts of the ocean plastic is outnumbering plankton by six to one, and marine animals are ingesting it. While paper items are the number two litter item (behind cigarette butts), Carlson said the concern is that the plastic pieces do not degrade in the animals’ digestive tracts. He pointed out that the Los Angeles area will have to spend about $1 billion on such litter clean up because of a lawsuit from Heal the Bay in Santa Monica.

He also told SRLU that his group is meeting with opposition companies this month to see if there are areas of compromise.

Caps and lids are number 7 on the marine debris “dirty dozen” list. Carlson said he believes there is no need to further assess the drinks sector, (which already must deal with a huge deposit system) and that the issue of plastic caps can be dealt with through voluntary industry efforts to change their designs. He says there is a need for more easily recyclable caps and those that do not break away from the bottle. He added that caps should be colored blue or clear rather than red, orange or brown, because those colors look like food to sea animals.

Carlson is reviewing various degradable additive technologies regarding plastic bag design. He acknowledged that when the bag industry tried degradable additives in the early 1990s, environmentalists shot them down. “We didn’t have the composting infrastructure then,” he says, adding that compostable films may be a solution, but they must be phased in slowly as the composting infrastructure develops.