San Francisco plastic bag ban legislation
garners worldwide BBC audience

Superivsor Ross Mirkarimi prepares for an interview with the BBC's World Service
to talk about legislation he sponsored that bans plastic shopping bags in San Franciscio.
Photo(s) by Luke Thomas

By Luke Thomas

September 16, 2007

San Francisco's lead in banning plastic shopping bags in an effort to curb greenhouse gas emissions as well as reduce non-degradable landfill waste, captured a worldwide audience Friday when Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi took to the world stage on the BBC's live television broadcast service.

Mirkarimi, who sponsored municipal legislation banning the use of plastic bags, was invited by the BBC's World Service in London to talk about the ban and to help promote municipally inspired bans of petroleum-based plastic bags in cities all across the world.

"It's a very solid idea - inline with the times - because we cannot wait for our federal or state government to enact these kind of measures," Mirkarimi said. "Many people felt throughout San Francisco that it was high time that we helped lead the charge municipally.

"Our law bans the petroleum-made polyethylene plastic bag and requires grocery stores and drugs stores to replace plastic bags with a bio-degradable or compostable bag. Our preference would be that we would ban both so that we would incentivize people to use reusable bags.

"Recycling in the United States of plastic bags amounts to, at most, 2 percent per year out of an estimated 100 billion bags that are used. So we're nowhere on pace as we should be.

"There has to be some manufacturing responsibility instead of deflecting it onto the taxpayers or local government. After all, we're the ones who have to pay for the degradation to our environment, and the taxpaying cost of discarding these bags.

"And, yet, the companies who are foisting these upon us are the ones who are getting off the hook. So we're saying - and I applaud London's consideration - either taxing the [plastic] bags or banning them altogether because, after all, it's our environment that has to live with this."

Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi is joined by his legislative aide Boris Delepine
who helped Mirkarimi in his effort to move San Francisco towards legislating responsible
consumer practices.

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