Sunnyvale City Council passes strong single-use carryout bag ordinance

Tuesday night, December 6, 2011  night by a 5-1 vote, the Sunnyvale City Council passed a strong single-use, carryout bag ordinance.  The ordinance bans those ubiquitous, light-weight plastic bags with handles, distributed at check-out counters.  It places a 10 cent charge, to be kept by the retailer, on single-use paper bags. These bags must contain 40 percent post-consumer recycled paper. This part of the ordinance, scheduled to go into effect in June, 2012, will apply to the 90ish stores originally the focus of this project.
 
In addition, Council voted to extend the ordinance to all retailers (except restaurants and non-profit reuse stores like Goodwill and Sunnyvale Community Services) in March 2013. The thinking was that since the hundreds of additional stores have not yet been individually contacted by City staff, additional time was needed for staff to contact them to explain the ordinance and the reasons for it and for these stores to prepare to implement the new law.  Council also voted to follow San Jose's lead in raising the charge for paper bags in the future.  (San Jose currently plans to increase the charge for paper bags to 25 cents, in January of 2014, to further discourage the use of single-use bags.) In adopting this ban, Council sought to be consistent with San Jose's ordinance in order to bring regional consistency to carryout bag practices.  By March 2013 the Sunnyvale and Sa n Jose ordinances are scheduled to be consistent the big issues--scope and paper bag charges.
 
It was exciting to see eight Sunnyvale residents and a representative of Save the Bay speak so persuasively in favor of the ordinance prior to the vote, while no one spoke in opposition (except the dissenting Councilmember).   
Special thanks to

• Councilmember Lee for sponsoring the study issue 3 years ago, holding out for regional consistency, and supporting raising the charge for paper in the future to better encourage the use of reusable bags. He stressed we need habit change. 
• Vice-Mayor Griffith for arguing so persuasively and passionately for consistency between the two largest cities in the region, making the case against plastic bags from a city operations point of view, and stressing that this ordinance was about reducing the use of single-use bags, not just plastic bags, so that raising the charge for paper bags in the future may be required. 
• Mayor Hamilton for holding out for the ability to raise the paper bag charge (together with Lee and Griffith), for pointing out that just encouraging the switch to reusable bags hasn't worked and for insisting that the use of single use cannot continue.
• Councilmembers Moylan and Spitaleri for supporting the motion even though it was not exactly how they would have framed the motion.  (They both differed in how they would set increases in the paper bag charge.) 

Special thanks also to our City of Sunnyvale staff who, at Council's direction, did all the work to make this ordinance a reality.  There efforts to implement the ordinance has just begun.
 
Much outreach remains to be done to inform residents the benefits of the ordinance.