That is happening in Huntington Beach, where, reported the Orange County Register:

the council took the first step to repeal the ban on single-use plastic bags, saying there’s no evidence that it helps the environment and that voters should decide whether to ban the bags.

The council voted 6-1, with Mayor Jill Hardy dissenting, to have city staff draft an ordinance repealing the ban and get a $5,000 environmental impact report on what the repercussions could be, if any, without the ban.

That could be a good omen for the effort to repeal a statewide ban enacted by the Legislature, but currently held up pending the initiative’s fate.

I live in Huntington Beach and went to the local grocery store Thursday and asked for plastic bags. “I’ve been asked that 19 times today,” the checkout clerk replied. “But No. We don’t have them yet.”

I’m looking forward to that day. Then I’ll see fewer cases of an enviro-person bringing in a germ-laden “reusable” bag and contaminating the whole store.

I’m pretty resistant to colds and hadn’t had one for two years until last fall. Then I got three in a row. Was it from the contaminated enviro-bags? It’s impossible to tell.

But…

Sick bags

USA Today reported:

PALM SPRINGS, Calif. — Jamie Norton considered himself an early adopter of reusable shopping bag, keeping them in the trunk of his car so they’re on hand whenever he stops for groceries.

But washing the bags wasn’t part of the routine.

“If it gets too dirty, I just toss it out,” Norton, 61, said as he walked out of Jensen’s grocery store here with one of his bags full of food. “I have never washed a reusable bag.”

Research shows the vast majority of shoppers are like Norton. A 2011 study from scientists at the University of Arizona and Loma Linda University found only 3% of shoppers with multi-use bags said they regularly washed them. The same study found bacteria in 99% of bags tested; half carried coliform bacteria while 8% carried E. coli, an indicator of fecal contamination.

“I classify them as pretty dirty things, like the bottom of your shoes,” said Ryan Sinclair of the Loma Linda University School of Public Health, a co-author of the study.

He is finalizing another study he hopes to publish soon looking at how pathogens spread through grocery stores with the help of reusable bags. The study, conducted at a central California grocery store in early 2013, involved spraying bags with a bacteria not harmful to humans but transported in a similar way to norovirus, a leading cause of gastrointestinal disease linked to more than 19 million illnesses each year in the United States.

The tracer bacteria was detected in high concentrations on shopping carts, at the checkout counter and on food items shoppers had touched but kept on the shelf.

Sinclair said the contamination cycle often began right after shoppers entered the store and placed their bags in the bottom or the baby carrier of a shopping cart, two places notorious for germs.

As my heavily accented Russian teacher used to say back at the Defense Language School in Monterey when an obnoxious Navy student acted up, “That’s dsggguzting!”

By Brian Calle and Josephine Djuhana

Paper or plastic? Residents of Los Angeles soon may no longer hear that question at grocery checkout stands as the City of Angels has taken steps to ban certain grocery bags, effectively determining the kinds of bags shoppers are allowed to use when carrying groceries.

Recently Los Angeles’ City Council committee on Energy and Environment unanimously passed a recommendation to effectively ban the use of plastic bags within the city. Arguing that the decision would encourage residents to use reusable, “earth-friendly” shopping bags instead, the committee moved to prohibit more than 7,000 stores in Los Angeles from giving customers plastic bags for their purchased items. Additionally, grocery markets are required to charge customers 10 cents for paper bags; within six months, paper bags will be banned as well, if the plan goes through.

Based on the recommendation, the City Council is expected to vote on the ordinance in the coming weeks.

The plastic bag manufacturing industry supports more than 2,000 employees in Los Angeles alone. Workers at Crown Poly, a plastic bag manufacturer, protested the ban, stating that the move would result in dozens of unnecessary layoffs. Cathy Browne, general manager at Crown Poly, said, “Banning our product will harm our company and could put our local industry out of business and put these long-term employees on your unemployment rolls.” Elicia Ortiz, a single mom of three, stated that her job at Crown allowed her “to provide for her family” and help with medical costs for her special needs daughter. Their protests fell on deaf ears.

Other bans

The committee’s move was largely expected considering other unincorporated cities in Los Angeles County have already moved forward with bag bans.

Effective July of last year, stores in cities belonging to unincorporated Los Angeles County were no longer allowed to provide plastic bags for their customers. Legal attempts to fight against the ban made by plastic bag manufacturers and other petitioners were shot down in court last week, when Superior Court Judge James Chalfant upheld Los Angeles County’s bag ban.

Los Angeles Supervisor Gloria Molina said the ruling was a “huge victory not only for Los Angeles County, but for all jurisdictions waiting to see what happens in the case so they can implement similar laws.”

Los Angeles has plenty of problems to tackle—what with its crumbling infrastructure, dilapidated neighborhoods, a high unemployment rate, and more—yet the city instead seems poised to pick on shoppers, bag makers and stores.

“At a time when unemployment in Los Angeles County is 12.1 percent, the City Council should be looking at ways to support industry; instead the Council is considering banning a useful product without regard to the workers employed by the industry or potential economic harm,” said Jay Beeber, who is the government affairs chair for the Sherman Oaks Neighborhood Council.

The Los Angeles City Council should probably worry less about plastic bags and think more about its $72 million budget deficit for fiscal year 2011; and its estimated $150-$250 million budget shortfall for fiscal year 2012, not to mention unfunded pension liabilities. Let’s hope the council votes the proposed ordinance down.