Sorry, bags. You're not welcome here anymore. Photo by Curtis Cartier.
Plastic bags and Styrofoam are going to be scarce sights around these parts soon. On Monday, March 19, the day before a plastic bag ban went into effect in unincorporated Santa Cruz County.html, the city of Santa Cruz proper took steps to outlaw single-use plastic bags and the sale of polystyrene cups, coolers and peanuts. The public works commission unanimously passed the measures, paving the way for city council to vote on them.
The bag ban, like the county ordinance it mirrors, would effectively prevent retailers from using single-use plastic bags and implement a 10-cent charge for paper bags. The city’s ordinance would exempt restaurants for which the primary business is the sale of take-out items. Again, the exemption mirrors the county’s law. (The county ordinance initially included restaurants but dropped that provision after the Save the Plastic Bags Coalition threatened to sue.)
The second ordinance the commission voted on is an aggressive expanded ban on the use of polystyrene. The measure builds on a 2007 city law limiting the sale of non-biodegradable material for food storage and carryout. The new provision would move beyond restaurants to retailers, prohibiting the sale in town of Styrofoam cups and coolers as well as polystyrene packing products like foam peanuts. The ordinance is modeled after a recently passed Capitola law that is the strictest in the country.
Both ordinances now go to the Santa Cruz city council for approval.
