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.

LID Passes! (At least another round)

In rounding out unfinished business from 2010, a nice bit of news about the City Council passing a LID ordinance for Los Angeles before the calendar year ran out.  (Or, at least an important directive to prepare a full, legal ordinance to vote on and officially enact sometime in early 2011.)  LA Creek Freak has the details:

At its final meeting of the year, yesterday, Friday December 17th 2010, the Los Angeles City Council passed “LID”  Low Impact Development. You can read some earlier background at Creek Freak and elsewhere, but basically it means that, in the city of Los Angeles, new development (and substantial redevelopment) will need will need to be more sustainable in regards to rainwater. Buildings, landscapes, parking lots, etc. will need to slow, detain and store and/or infiltrate water on-site, instead of speeding it into storm drains, creeks, rivers, and the sea.

This took a while. L.A. Creek Freak started reporting on the city of L.A. efforts in September 2009, attended a workshop in October 2009, and reported on the Public Works Board passing LID  in January 2010. Plenty more excellent coverage is available at Heal the Bay’s Mark Gold’s Spouting Off.


It also took a great deal of effort from the city’s Board of Public Works and the Bureau of Sanitation’s Watershed Protection Division – in conjunction with city environmentalists, especially Heal the Bay, TreePeople, and Green L.A. Coalition. Some developers and building industry folks have opposed LID because it can make make some construction more expensive. Ultimately, though there had been opposition at earlier hearings, LID passed council with no elected’s nor public speaker’s opposition. It slipped in quietly via the consent calendar.

There are still a few steps before the mass proliferation of creek-friendly developments, too – the motion that passed directs the City Attorney to prepare the regulations, then those get adopted and take effect… stay tuned.

. . . .

Pretty exciting to recognize not only that environmental advocacy and education worked to pass the measure, but effectively worked (in conjunction with the support of environmentally engaged council members) to sway the entire City Council.   This bodes well for official passing of the final, legal measure once the City Attorney prepares it for the City Council.  Congrats to all of supporters of the measure, and the tireless organizations who helped move it forward.  The watershed, and I, thank you.  

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.

. . . .

Santa Monica Glow

"Intersection" by Freewaves & SuperExpo

This post is a few weeks late in coming, but I had the chance to attend the 2010 Santa Monica Glow festival this year, and was duly impressed by the scope and scale of the event.  Glow showcases a number of light artists and light-focused installations for one-night in downtown Santa Monica, and on Santa Monica Beach around the Santa Monica Pier.  Typically the installations feature interactive components in addition to light-based art, and the event draws as many as 250,000 attendees every year.  As you can tell from some of the pictures, the projects vary from the whimsical to the reflective.  Because of the sheer scale of the festival, I wasn't able to see all of the projects, but probably my favorite was an interactive projection installation titled "Sandbox" by Spanish artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer.  Sadly, I did not get any photos of it, but the official description provides a taste of the project:

Visitors are are invited to dip their hands into two sandboxes, which are alive with the small 'ghosts' of the Glow audience projected onto their surfaces.  As visitors play in the sand, real-time images of their hands are transmitted into an 8,000 square feet area of the adjacent beach, radically enlarging human scale to the gigantic. 
- "Sandbox", Rafael Lozano-Hemmer

The result was a fantastic, slightly creepy, but wholly mesmerizing installation that captivated people's imaginations in a unique and compelling way.  Some other interesting projects included an architectural installation titled "Luminous Passage" by Predock & Frane, an interactive project called "La Bella Luna" by Anne Herlihy, a video piece titled "coast lines" by Steve Roden, and "shapednoise" by Celeste Boursier-Mougenot.  As the pictures and videos show below, "La Bella Luna" featured a floating orb with the projected faces of volunteer karoke singers, creating a disembodied, YouTube-esque display and icon on the beach.  "shapednoise" had perhaps the best, wonderously bizarre aspect to it of the evening, as a lifeguard tower was slowly consumed by foam.  All in all, an impressive group of projects that not only provided some interesting art, but also energized Santa Monica Beach as a mass public space for a night.  More descriptions of all of the projects at available on the Glow website. 

"La Bella Luna" by Anne Herlihy

"La Bella Luna" by Anne Herlihy

"Luminous Passage" by Predock-Frane Architects.

"shapednoise" by Celeste Boursier-Mougenot

Environmental Hope - "A Cleaner Bill of Health for Santa Monica Bay"

Guess what - sometimes there is good news about the environment!  Especially when we take measures to stop pollution sources (I know, a very radical concept).  The Santa Monica Bay Restoration Commission (SMBRC) released their 2010 State of the Bay report, and it had some good news and hope for the future health of the bay.  As the LA Times reported, the assessment noted:

. . . the revival of bottom-dwelling marine life in the wake of treatment upgrades at the two big wastewater plants that empty into the bay several miles from shore. 

Diver surveys have documented sea animals and plants on the sea floor "where really it was barren before," said Shelley Luce, executive director of the Santa Monica Bay Restoration Commission, which issues the report every five years. "I think this is one of the more remarkable recoveries we've seen," she added.

"It's right up there with the return of the bald eagle and brown pelican."

Maybe not as visually dramatic: We're talking about snails and worms and other invertebrates crawling back into areas that for decades lacked the oxygen to support all but the most pollution-tolerant sea life.

While they might not be cuddly, charismastic megafauna, they are key elements of rebuilding an ocean ecology and hopefully signs of the bay's recovery.  Much work still remains to be done (note the historical contamination from DDT and PCBs persisting in sediment, and the ever present issue of urban runoff), but at least we can enjoy the return of invertebrates this time around.