Republican FL Legislature bans local governments from cracking down on plastic grocery bags

[seafan]

The Republican smash and grab getaway car turns into a pumpkin when the final legislative session ends this Friday.

It CANNOT come soon enough.




To the rescue of endangered grocery bags!

BY BETH REINHARD
April 26, 2008

Seattle is thinking about making shoppers pay 20 cents for every new paper or plastic bag. San Fransciso has outlawed plastic bags altogether at large supermarkets. Boston is also considering a ban, while Phoenix is giving away free canvas bags.

But in Tallahassee -- just in time for Earth Week -- lawmakers are coming to the rescue of the polyethylene pariah.

Perhaps only in the Florida Legislature, that little-known muse for the famous Joni Mitchell lyric, ''They paved paradise and put up a parking lot,'' could legislation to promote energy efficiency and airport recycling get hitched to the Endangered Plastic Act of 2008.

The measure would ban local governments from cracking down on plastic bags until the state completes a recycling study in 2010. (Is there anything politicians faced with a vexing issue love more than a study?)

The act cleared the Florida House Friday, with sponsor Stan Mayfield, a Vero Beach Republican, warning of ''a hodgepodge set of regulations, differing from county to county,'' though he said he didn't know of any.

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The bill has been greased by a team of pro-business lobbyists who want to keep happy their customers who don't BYOB.

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Cheaper than paper and easier to reuse, plastic bags have become the carrier of choice since they entered the marketplace more than a quarter-century ago. Anti-plastic warriors estimate that 100 billion bags are used in the U.S. every year -- only a tiny fraction are recycled -- though industry officials are skeptical of that figure.

The bags are expected to take hundreds of years to decompose in a landfill, after a long, unproductive life spent tumbling down sidewalks, waving from trees, clogging storm drains and bobbing in the ocean.

They're suffocating the planet, environmental activists say.

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