San Francisco bans plastic shopping bags

San Francisco has become the first American city to ban plastic bags from large supermarkets and chemists' shops - attracting the applause of environmentalists but also scepticism from business owners and many heartland Americans who feel that the quintessential "Left Coast" city has once again dived off the deep end.

San Francisco's board of supervisors - the equivalent of a city council - voted 10 to 1 in favour of the ban, which would oblige supermarkets with annual turnover of more than $2m (£1m) to implement the change within six months and pharmacies with more than five outlets to do so within a year.

The bill's sponsors hope to see a major switch to biodegradable, compostable plastic made from corn starch as opposed to the most prevalent current kind made from oil products. Some critics worry, however, that supermarkets will resort instead to paper, which will impact the environment in a different way because of it will require more trees to be chopped down.

The groundbreaking ordinance - which mirrors similar anti-plastic measures taken around the world, from Ireland to Bangladesh - follows a long, drawn out fight between the city's political leaders and the California Grocers Association, which has resisted the change tooth and nail.

Two years ago, San Francisco agreed not to levy a 17 cent tax on plastic bags if the supermarkets would agree to cut the number of plastic bags it used by 10 million each year. The grocers' association claimed it cut the number by 7.6 million in 2006 - a number that not only fell short of the target but appeared unreliable because of the way the data was gathered.

The new ordinance is not quite a reality. The board of supervisors has to take a second vote, and the measure needs to be approved by Mayor Gavin Newsom. But all parties have expressed support and nothing is expected to derail its final passage.

"We can take steps to make our economy a little more soulful in San Francisco," the ordinance's chief sponsor, supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, told reporters after Tuesday's vote was taken. "We can't sleepwalk into the future. The end of the era of cheap oil is here." San Francisco generates an estimated 180 million plastic bags each year. California as a whole uses more than 19 million - or more than 500 per resident. Worldwide, the figure is somewhere between four and five trillion. The bags are hard to recycle, blow into trees and waterways, choke animals and birds and take up increasingly large amounts of space in landfills.

Bangladesh banned plastic bags after it discovered they had blocked the country's sewerage system and greatly exacerbated the effects of flooding.

If the California supermarkets are resistant to change, it is partly because biodegradable bags are more expensive to produce - somewhere between 5 and 10 cents per bag, compared with 2 to 3 cents for a conventional plastic bag.

Mr Mirkarimi and others argue, however, that the cost of biodegradable bags will decrease as demand goes up. The only supervisor to take the supermarkets' side, Ed Jew, said the ordinance did not go far enough. Smaller markets not covered by the law use 95,000 bags a year. The city is also declining to regulate the extensive plastic packaging used to wrap food on supermarket shelves.

Californians are already laughed at by many other Americans because they have started programmes to encourage reusable canvas shopping bags - something that is still widely regarded as an eccentricity rather than a practical step to counter pollution. The trends California starts, though, tend to spread elsewhere sooner or later. Mr Mirkarimi said he was delighted at the national attention his measure is receiving, and added: "Hopefully, other cities and other states will follow suit."

A progressive city

San Francisco's progressive brand of politics can sometimes seem visionary, and sometimes eccentric. Among other measures passed in recent years are:

* A law banning styrofoam food containers.

* A law encouraging clean-fuel construction vehicles at city job sites.

* A law banning discrimination against rental and job applicants based on "perceived gender" - in other words, protecting transsexuals, effeminate men, butch lesbians, etc.

* A law offering health care coverage for sex change operations on the domestic partners of city employees. This was instituted by the former mayor Willie Brown as a special favour to a single employee, the then city elections chief Tammy Haygood.

* A regulation making it illegal to use someone's pre-worn underwear to clean windscreens in city car washes.

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