It has only been a month since the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors voted to ban plastic bags from stores and restaurants in all unincorporated areas of the county. That is all it took for the Save the Plastic Bag Coalition to challenge the law in court. Stephen Joseph, the San Francisco lawyer behind the suit, says that there is no scientifically backed evidence to support the notion that plastic bags are harmful to the environment. “You at least have to have some valid findings,” he says. “But they don’t. They have invalid finding.”
Of special interest to the group is the ban on restaurants providing plastic bags for takeout food, a rare decision, even in many towns and counties that have already banned plastic bags in grocery stores. According to Joseph, plastic is absolutely essential, especially for hot foods and for takeout dishes with lots of sauce, such as Chinese and Indian food. “When it comes to food, you need plastic bags,” he says.
There is a point to that, some claim, especially since the ordinance makes exceptions for groceries such as frozen foods and meat. On the other hand, it is also worth noting that the original patent for plastic bags was submitted in 1965, and before that, plastic was not used. The petrochemical giant Mobil only overturned the patent in 1977, and plastic bags first started being used regularly in grocery stores in 1982 by the Kroger grocery chain.
As for Joseph, a former lobbyist, this is not the first time he has taken on an unpopular cause. In 2003 he sued Kraft, hoping to ban the sale of Oreo cookies to children under 11 in California due to their high trans fat content. Though he eventually lost the case, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger later signed an anti-trans-fat bill into law. Joseph later went on to conduct several anti-litter campaigns, and forced San Francisco’s parking department to remove graffiti from its signs. When it comes to plastic bags, he says they’re getting a bad rap, and that paper bags take more energy to produce and release methane when they decompose.
“The anti-plastic-bag campaigners are not being challenged,” he told Time. “It’s like a court case where nobody’s representing the other side.”
Read more at Santa Cruz Sentinel and Time.
