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# The time to ban plastic bags is now
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/the-time-to-ban-plastic-bags-is-now/
- Published: 2008-01-15T16:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-24T23:01:31.000Z
- Author: David Pisarra
- Tags: Opinion, Santa Monica, #archive-import

IT WAS TWO YEARS AGO THAT I WAS driving home from a Christmas in Utah when I was struck by the powerful, awful image of a roadside inundated with plastic bags. In January of 2006 I wrote a column about the vile use of such a waste of plastic. I said that their main redeeming value was that they were used by pet owners such as myself to pick up after my dog. I called them poo bags.

My article pointed out that Ireland put a tax on their plastic bags and saw an immediate 95 percent drop in their use, thus proving that it is not just the Scottish who are frugal. I suggested a tax be placed on the use of bags in our fair city of $1.00 per bag.

People thought I was crazy. But, the proposal was floated out there by the state Assembly. However, in a state where we are $14 billion short of funds, the Schwarzenegger government (I’m including the Assembly and the Senate in that) has better things to do than pass a consumption tax that will generate revenue, help with conservation and beautify the state. It died.

Well, along comes China. Yes, that great behemoth of conspicuous oil consumption, those environmental wastrels, have the nerve to take wholesale action, and ban the use of plastic bags, nationally, effective in June of this year.

Now their reasons for doing so are different than the ones that I put forth. They are looking at the problem from the perspective of saving 37 million barrels of oil. (Note, yes, plastic comes from oil. It is a petroleum based product. I’m not making this up, really.) I say great. I realize that it’s because they want to use the oil for things like gasoline, and other more profitable plastics. Whatever their reasons, the ending of the production and use of these bags by 1.3 billion people is a good thing. Granted, it is China, and there does seem to be a bit of lawlessness there, but at least their making an effort,and if they reduce their use by 95 percent, that’s a lot of poo bags not in the environment.

I realize that it is not the entire solution, and lord only knows if the solution is going to be worse than the problem, but it is a step in the right direction in my book. I wanted these things reduced for their aesthetic blight they cause, and for their damage to the environment. The fact that they have some good aspects is not really enough for me. After two years of watching what people do with them, how slowly the government moves in reducing their use and increasing their recycling, I have come to believe that we are better off with the wholesale eradication of them.

Here’s why I feel that way, I was in my local grocery store the other day, and there was this lovely couple, who obviously were Green Party members. Their food choices screamed that they were vegetarian, holistically organic and environmentally aware. They had brought their own canvas grocery bags to be used. So what does the bagger do, the only thing he can think of doing, bag the groceries in the double bagged plastic bags, and then place them in the canvas bags.

I just wanted to scream at him, and them, “how can you be so dense, and so unclear on the concept”. But I realized that there is no motivating force driving him to change his behavior, the shoppers have no motivating force, other than a vague sense of altruistic “greenness”, to change their behavior, and there is no force on the clerk to change.

Thus, I’m changing my suggestion. I don’t believe that a $1.00 tax on the bags would do it. I think China has the right idea — ban the bags.

It is too late for our City Council to show the world how progressive we are on this topic. We can’t be out front on this one, but at least we can join the growing pack.

DAVID PISARRA is a Family Law Attorney in the Santa Monica firm of Pisarra & Grist. He or (310) 664-9969.

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 15, 2008.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/011508.pdf?ref=smdp.com)