Imagine walking into your favorite local Chinese restaurant. The nostalgic smell of chow mein and Mongolian beef fills the air. Behind the cash register, a man greets you, warmly smiling, welcoming you wholeheartedly as he hands you your order. The bag that delicious food is packed in is no other than the thin, white, plastic “Thank You” bag, stamped with that iconically familiar smiley face.
Say your goodbyes to these take-out bags, because as of Jan. 1, most grocery, retail and commercial stores in California are prohibited from providing plastic carryout bags to customers at checkout, in accordance with Senate Bill 1053. Previously, the minimum cost of plastic bags was 10 cents, which is the same required charge that has now been applied to solely paper bags.
Gavin Newsom, CA’s governor, signed this bill into law on Sept. 22, 2024, and it has been in effect since the new year. People in our community of varied backgrounds and experiences have diverse viewpoints on how this law impacts plastic in the environment and its role.
“I think that’s (SB 1053) great, because plastic bags harm a lot of marine life, and it gets stuck on like turtles and stuff you see, like the ads all the time telling you not to dump waste in the ocean. And when plastic breaks down, it breaks into microplastics, which are really bad for the environment, and they emit fossil fuels, which are also really bad for the environment,” GBHS Junior Anika Mahajan said.
Prior to this law, there was another, Senate Bill 270 of 2014. It restricted the thickness of plastic bags sold, requiring single-use plastic bags to meet a minimum width of 2.25 mm, supported by the claim that thicker bags were more recyclable. Consequently, this proved counterproductive and unsuccessful in achieving its goal of improving the plastic situation.
“That takes more plastic, and so by weight, it massively increased the amount of plastic being produced and showing up in our waste streams,” Elizabeth Henderson, GBHS science teacher, said.
Low-density polyethylene (LDPE) makes up a large majority of what plastic bags are made of. A material very common in various plastic products, such as garbage bags, clingwrap and disposable gloves. However, to highlight plastic bags specifically, their use averages out to about 12 minutes, yet only 3% are recycled globally, meaning that after they’re utilized once, maybe two times, they’re discarded.
Henderson also raises the point that eliminating plastic bags sold at the checkout doesn’t affect the production of these bags, nor does it change or dictate what’s being done with the preexisting plastic bags from before Jan 1. At the level that we use plastic in our economy and way of life, many wonder how, if even possible, to reduce its impact.
“Stop producing plastic, full stop. Like the biggest thing we have, the technology. We have a lot of the material science in place to develop plastics that are biodegradable,” Henderson said. “Stop the old style production of plastics that are these inorganic forever chemicals and forever plastics that, you know, go nowhere.”
For our state, the stat is less than 5% as well, of plastic bags being recycled. Most end up in landfills and the ocean, or other places where they’re not being reused or properly recycled. It’s evident that plastic bags make a large contribution to the amount of plastic polluting the environment, and that recycling has not been an effective way to reduce this.
“I see plastic bags stuck in bushes and trees all the time, side of the road, just driving down the highway, like everywhere (…) they are so easily caught by the wind and like dispersed. So they may have initially been put in the garbage properly, but then, when the truck comes and empties the garbage and flings it, it escapes, escapes landfills, you name it, still there’s nowhere to put them,” Henderson said.
An example of student action is well represented in senior GBHS student and club 350 leader, Fynn Gaillard. He attempts to combat climate change by reducing his carbon footprint through using less single-use plastics and educating fellow students in the club.
“I think a law that attempts to reduce the amount of single-use plastic that we use would be probably the next step towards reducing the amount of plastic we consume,” Gaillard said. “We can’t just stop all production altogether. It could collapse industries and businesses, but I do think we’re not doing enough to start curbing that. I think radical change is only going to cause chaos.”
Henderson and Gaillard both emphasized the idea of collaboration and frequently addressed it in every step, through communicating with larger-scale pick-up crews, government legislation between states and countries and scientific research for solutions. To foster change and reach common goals, people of all different strengths and levels need to work together.
“We need to plan, not only among scientists and environmentalists, but also with businesses and politicians, to all come together and find a solution that gets us onto a more sustainable track,” Gaillard said.
