Bag Ban Takes Effect

It's official - the Plastic Bag Ban in unincorporated Los Angeles County took effect yesterday, Friday July 1st.  The ban initially impacts large retailers, preventing them from dispensing sold items in plastic bags and instead requiring them to use paper bags only.  Cost of the change will be passed along to consumers who will be charged 10 cents a bag, unless they bring their own reusable tote bags.  Eventually the ban will include smaller, independent stores.  An overview of the ban was detailed by the LA Times:

The bag ban was touted by county supervisors as an environmental measure to rid the county of "urban tumbleweed" that pollutes landfills and gets washed out to sea. Paper bags will still be available, but customers will be charged 10 cents per bag.

The effort is intended to encourage shoppers to bring reusable bags to the market for shopping.

The plastic bag ban will affect anyone who shops at stores outside the county's incorporated cities, such as the communities of Rowland Heights, Hacienda Heights, Altadena, La Crescenta, Topanga Canyon, Marina del Rey, Baldwin Hills, Athens, Willowbrook, Florence, Rancho Dominguez, Valencia, East Pasadena and East Los Angeles. About 1.1 million people in the county live in the unincorporated areas.

Although some remain critical of the ban, this is a big environmental victory that should have long-term benefits for waterways throughout Southern California and beyond (see the Los Angeles Times Pulitzer Prize winning series on the ocean - Part 4 for more information on plastic bags effects).  Although incorporated areas of Los Angeles remain unaffected, the ban still impacts 1.1 million people, a figure that only 8 US cities (not including Los Angeles) have populations larger than.  In other words, this limited action by the County of Los Angeles actually produces a massive civic-sponsored change in urban function, pointing out how the scale of  Los Angeles is not just a challenge, but also an immense opportunity to exploit.  While we tend to focus on ways in which mistakes are magnified by the sheer size of Los Angeles, this ban highlights how small positive changes can also become monumental shifts for the benefit of the environment.

More coverage of the ban is available at the LA Times and at Marina Del Rey Patch.

Paper or plastic? How about just Paper

Image from LA Times. All Rights Reserved.

This past Tuesday, Los Angeles County officially banned all plastic carryout bags from use in unincorporated portions of the County.  The vote marks a big environmental victory for LA County, with the potential to severely reduce the amount of plastics polluting our waterways and urban landscapes.  Admittedly, the ban remains imperfect, particularly because it only affects unincorporated portions of the County, but with more than 1.1 million residents being affected, the scale of the ban is still quite significant.   The LA Times has great coverage and recap of the vote, including comments from its detractors, and comparisons of the ban to similar efforts in California and beyond.  Below is an except:

. . . .

The ban, which will cover nearly 1.1 million residents countywide, is to the point: “No store shall provide to any customer a plastic carryout bag.” An exception would be made for plastic bags that are used to hold fruit, vegetables or raw meat in order to prevent contamination with other grocery items.

If grocers choose to offer paper bags, they must sell them for 10 cents each, according to the ordinance. The revenue will be retained by the stores to purchase the paper bags and educate customers about the law.

“Plastic bags are a pollutant. They pollute the urban landscape. They are what we call in our county urban tumbleweed,” Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said.

Mark Gold, president of the Santa Monica environmental group Heal the Bay, said previous county efforts to promote recycling of plastic bags at grocery stores was a failure.

“You cannot recycle your way out of the plastic bag problem,” Gold said. “The cost of convenience can no longer be at the expense of the environment.”

The measure is a significant win for environmental groups, which suffered a major defeat in Sacramento at the end of August with the failure of the state Senate to pass a sweeping plastic bag ban that won the support of the state Assembly and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger amid heavy and costly lobbying by plastic bag manufacturers.

But the ban could cause confusion. The action by the Board of Supervisors only covers the unincorporated areas of L.A. County, covering some neighborhoods like Altadena, Valencia and Rowland Heights, but doesn't cover 88 cities in L.A. County. City councils could adopt a similar ordinance.

Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich  raised the prospect that small mom-and-pop shops could suffer financially because they won’t be able to buy paper and reusable bags in great volume, and could force low-income people to buy bags to pick up pet waste or carry their lunch.

“At a time of economic uncertainty, with a large number of businesses leaving our state and community this would not be an appropriate time ... to impose this additional regulation,” Antonovich said.

Opponents of the ban told the supervisors that a legal challenge to the ban is still a possibility.

With the Tuesday vote, L.A. County’s measure is more stringent than similar bans adopted elsewhere in California, Gold said.  

San Francisco’s ban, which passed three years ago, is less restrictive because it still permits grocers to offer bioplastic bags made from corn starch, which are imperfect because they also do not degrade in the ocean, Gold said. Bans in San Francisco and Malibu also do not add a surcharge on paper bags, Gold said, which does not give consumers an incentive to switch to reusable cloth bags.

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Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My (Okay, just Lions . . . Mountain Lions that is)

(Image from LA Times.  All Rights Reserved.)

So, after a busy couple of weeks away from the blog, what better way to return than with a great story about nature persisting, and hopefully enduring in the midst of our urban context.  The LA Times reported that a litter of three mountain lions was discovered in Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area! 

The Santa Monica Mountains welcomed a litter of three mountain lions, officials announced today.

According to the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, the kittens were discovered on May 26 near Peter Strauss Ranch. Two are female and one is male, according to a news release.

"Each mountain lion kitten has been implanted with a tracking device that will allow researchers to follow the kittens’ movement," according to the recreation area. "This is the first urban mountain lion study that has had the opportunity to track mountain lion kittens from such a young age. National Park Service researchers will study the new litter to see if the male mountain lion kitten will attempt to disperse to more expansive habitat when he matures, and if the females will have litters of their own in the future."

Officials say it marks only the second time officials have documented a litter of mountain lions in the Santa Monica Mountains. The first was in the summer of 2004.

Great news, and an incredible opportunity to learn more about the migration patterns of mountain lions.  Like many large range predators, mountain lions have suffered a lot of negative consequences due to expanding urban areas throughout the southwest.  Hopefully this discovery provides both a positive sign for mountain lion populations, and a chance to improve our ability to protect and accommodate mountain lion habitat more successfully.  And, baby mountain lion pictures in the daily news cycle are always a good thing.

 (Image from LA Times.  All Rights Reserved.)

The Threat of Second-hand Driving

 (image from LA Times.  All Rights Reserved.)

In case you didn't already know that living near a freeway is not the best situation, the LA Times reported on a new study linking increased risk for heart disease for those living within 100 m (or 328 feet) of a freeway.  The main culprit: increased outdoor particulates for those living nearby.  

Los Angeles residents living near freeways experience a hardening of the arteries that leads to heart disease and strokes at twice the rate of those who live farther away, a study has found. The paper is the first to link automobile and truck exhaust to the progression of atherosclerosis — or the thickening of artery walls — in humans. The study was conducted by researchers from USC and UC Berkeley, joined by colleagues in Spain and Switzerland, and was published this week in the journal PloS ONE.

Researchers used ultrasound to measure the wall thickness of the carotid artery in 1,483 people who lived within 100 meters, or 328 feet, of Los Angeles freeways. Taking measurements every six months for three years, they correlated their findings with levels of outdoor particulates -- the toxic dust that spews from tailpipes -- at the residents’ homes. They found that artery wall thickness accelerated annually by 5.5 micrometers — one-twentieth the thickness of a human hair — or more than twice the average progression in study participants.