California Plastic Bag Law: Save Our Environment and All Helpless Aquatic Animals

05 Dec California Plastic Bag Law: Save Our Environment and All Helpless Aquatic Animals

The legislatures of several states have looked at lots of measures to lessen the obnoxious prevalence of plastic bags at grocery stores and other types of businesses that utilize these bags.

Plastic bags as we know are quite detrimental to our eco-system, they pollute our environment and make life hard for aquatic animals. The fact that plastic bags don’t degrade quickly makes it quite dangerous to our environment as a whole, therefore necessary measures must be put in place to reduce the rate at which these bags are used. One of these measures is the plastic bag law. The law which forbids the use of plastic bags is prevalent in some states and countries; one of the states that adopt the plastic bag law is California. The California bag law aims to reduce the use of plastic bags which will eventually lessen the detrimental effect it has on the environment.

Reducing the use of plastic bags can lessen their harmful impacts on rivers, oceans, lakes, forests, including wildlife that inhabits them. It can also lessen the enormous amount of pressure placed on landfills and waste management. While some states are busy concentrating on implementing effective recycling programs, other states are enacting laws and huge fines to shun individuals from the use of these bags.

In the year 2014,  in the month of August to be precise,  California became the very first state to introduce the legislation establishing a statewide prohibition on single-use plastic bags at big retail stores. The bill also needed a 10-cent minimum charge for recycled paper bags, compostable bags, and reusable plastic bags at specific areas.  The ban was all set to take effect on June 1, 2015, but a referendum pushed the problem onto the ballot in the election of November 2016.

Proposition 67 qualified with 52 % of the vote, which denotes that the ban on plastic bags confirmed by the legislature doesn’t change.

With the ban of plastic bags in California, individuals now go after eco-friendly alternatives such as paper bags, the legally reusable bags, etc. These bags don’t in any way whatsoever pose as harm to the environment or eco-system.

Already, the effect of the ban on plastic bags in California is being observed; according to CalRecycle (the agency charged with handling and enforcing California’s laws related to waste management, ever since the enactment of the this law by the California government), there has been massive decline in the use of plastic bags. Not only did the ban on the use of these bags results in a huge reduction in the quantity, but it also led to a reduction in the number of paper bags provided to customers as well.

Reason to Have Your Own Paper Bags

In summary, it is quite obvious that the law works to push customers into coming along with their own bags and display a clear decrease in the quantity of single-bag use plastic bags found on our beaches.

Before the California law against the use of plastic was established, Individuals who care about the eco-system took to the streets of California holding placards that read “Say no to plastic bags California” in the peaceful protest against the used of it in the state. Probably that one of the factors that gingered the California government to enact the law against the use of these polluted bags.