Earth Blog

The eco-friendly reusable shopping bag and travel accessory company BlueAvocado announced the launch of their first celebrity designed line: XO(eco).  The line is brought to you by Lauren Conrad, best known for her role on two of MTV’s popular reality (with some scripting when necessary) shows “Laguna Beach,” and its spin-off “The Hills.”

Conrad is no stranger to fashion design; she currently has a line sold at Kohl’s called LC by Lauren Conrad. Last fall she launched Paper Crown for boutiques and upscale retailers like Nordstrom.

Today after a lengthy discussion the Los Angeles City Council voted to banish single-use plastic bags. They have inched ever closer to enacting a policy that has been on the agenda for years -three according to this Los Angeles Times editorial.

We have been following the council’s progress on the issue since December of last year.  Since then smaller chunks of southern California and cities further up the west coast have passed ordinances but Los Angeles held off because in the words of Councilwoman Jan Perry they needed to go into this with “eyes wide open.”

Have you picked up the reusable bag habit yet? If you have, where do you keep your bags? Is it safe to assume you don’t keep them in a bathroom? Are you a reusable bag owner looking from your bag to your bathroom as you ponder the question and can only answer: “Well, that is just silly-grocery bags in the bathroom.”

Unfortunately, someone once kept a reusable bag in a hotel bathroom and it resulted in a stomach flu outbreak that affected a group of girls ages 13 and 14 and their four chaperones from Oregon during a 2010 soccer tournament trip in Washington state.

We have been following the Los Angeles City Council and their struggle to pass an ordinance banning single use plastic bags and charging a fee for paper bags for months now- since December to be precise.

Earlier this week during a three hour Energy & Environment Committee meeting the ban was revisited as the requested fiscal and community reports pertaining to a bag ban were given. This meeting also included a presentation of the proposed fiscal budget for the Department of Water and Power for the upcoming year by its commissioners.  

As more towns pass ordinances banning plastic bags, shoppers not in the habit of bringing their own reusable bags are scrambling to buy a few when they happen to remember. Some are simply going to take their business elsewhere- to neighboring towns where laws don’t prohibit stores from handing out plastic bags. The restrictions might cause inconvenience, which results in sighing and eye-rolling but communities are catching on to the idea of the bans quickly.

What isn’t a habit yet for people who currently use the canvas bags is laundering them regularly. 

According to a new survey by the Home Food Safety program only fifteen percent or less than one in six  Americans who have the re-usable bag wash them.  So while they are merrily carrying their bags their bags are happily carrying germs and bacteria.

Today is January 16th, 2012 so it’s been thirty days since Los Angeles City Councilwoman Jan Perry of the Energy & Environment committee asked that further information regarding a city-wide plastic bag ban/paper bag fee be brought for review. There are no meetings scheduled today, in observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day but perhaps we will hear something this week?

Yesterday, the Seattle City Council in Washington passed an ordinance that will ban single-use plastic bags. Seattle’s decision comes a little less than a week after the Los Angeles City Council failed to pass a similar ordinance further down the West Coast.  

According to The Seattle Times this is the second time the city has tried to end the use of plastic bags. The first time was in 2008 when a twenty cent fee was placed on paper and plastic bags but the ordinance never went into effect because the plastics industry spent millions of dollars to beat it back and succeeded when citizens voted against it. 

Plastic bags come with a warning on them: TO AVOID DANGER OF SUFFOCATION, KEEP THIS PLASTIC BAG AWAY FROM BABIES AND CHILDREN. DO NOT USE THIS BAG IN CRIBS, BEDS, CARRIAGES, AND PLAYPENS.

What they should also have printed on them is: TO AVOID DANGER OF POLLUTION DO NOT USE THIS

BAG EVER. KEEP THIS PLASTIC BAG AWAY FROM SEA TURTLES AND FISH. 

Plastic bags are bad for the environment because they break down slowly in a process called photodegrading which means they never really go away. The tiny bits sit around contaminating everything they come in contact with their toxins. Marine life mistakenly ingest plastic bags and bits thinking it’s food. The Pacific Garbage Patch is estimated to consist mostly of plastics.