By Khalida Sarwari
The Saratoga City Council received an update this month on how Gov. Jerry Brown’s statewide single-use plastic bag ban will impact Saratoga.
The discussion was centered on Senate Bill 270, which will ban certain retailers from distributing single-use plastic bags and goes into effect July 1, 2015. Brown signed the bill into law on Sept. 30, making California the first state to impose such a ban.
According to a city staff report, the law will be introduced in phases. The first will affect large grocery stores and any store that sells perishable food items that are meant for off-site consumption. The second phase starts July 1, 2016, and will impact any stores that sell perishable food items and beer, wine or spirits for off-site consumption. Affected retailers can sell either recycled paper bags or reusable bags for 10 cents or more.
While cities are authorized to enforce the law, they’re not obligated to do so, according to city clerk Crystal Bothelio.
“Cities can be as involved or as not involved as they choose,” she said.
The law will affect only two stores in Saratoga: Safeway and Gene’s Fine Foods.
City attorney Richard Taylor noted that referendum petitions are being circulated by opponents of the law, namely the American Progressive Bag Alliance group. If the referendum collects around 505,000 signatures by Dec. 29, “which is not as difficult as it used to be because of the low voter turnout,” the measure will be suspended, and it will be up to voters to decide on the November 2016 ballot. According to the APBA website, the organization represents plastic bag manufacturers in the United States and is focused on city actions or policies that could affect consumer use of plastic bags, increasing recycling, preventing littering, increasing reuse of bags and correcting misunderstandings about litter and waste.
The cities that have already adopted their own single-use plastic bag bans will not be affected by the legislation, Tayor said. Furthermore, the legislation would not trump any laws that have already been implemented by cities.
“What the legislation does is it stops cities that haven’t adopted rules from adopting rules,” he said.
Earlier this year, the council had tossed around the idea of adopting an ordinance banning single-use plastic bags if at the end of the legislative cycle the state did not adopt a ban on single use plastic bags. Saratoga is one of only a handful of cities in the county that doesn’t have a policy regulating the use of plastic bags. The cities of Campbell, Cupertino, Los Altos, Morgan Hill, Mountain View, Palo Alto, San Jose and Sunnyvale all have a bag-ban ordinance, as does the town of Los Gatos and Santa Clara County.
Link: Report on how state’s single-use plastic bag ban would impact the city
