Walk into any supermarket, buy some apples, zucchini, tomatoes and green beans, stop at the bulk bin for a pound of walnuts and some yoghurt-covered pretzels, then go through the check-out line and, depending on how much other food you bought, you will load into your car a minimum of seven – and probably several more – plastic bags.
When you get those bags home – if you are particularly conscientious – you will bundle them with other bags until you have a sizeable ball, and then you will put them in your recycling bin.
If, on the other hand, you simply put those bags in the trash, they will be taken to a landfill where some of them will escape on the wind while the rest remain intact underground for between 400 and 1,000 years.
Those possibilities were on the minds of Sonoma City Council members Monday night when they voted 5-0 to support a campaign by the Sonoma County Waste Management Agency (SCWMA) to develop an ordinance banning single-use, carry-out plastic bags.
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