May 22 - City of Chico Adopts Plastic Bag Ban

Chico, California made instrumental progress this week by pushing forward with the final adoption of their local plastic bag ban at a City Council meeting this past Tuesday, May 20th, 2014. The ban prevents plastics bags in grocery, drug, and convenience stores, and requires a ten cent charge on paper. Despite concerns from some public testimonials and councilmen Mark Sorensen and Sean Morgan dissenting, the final ban passed with a 5-2 vote, and will go into effect January 1st, 2015.
From the initially approved proposal on April 2nd, 2014 to this final adoption, Chico can celebrate a long awaited victory. In fact City Councilman Randall Stone jokingly said, "I think the public believes that we’ve already done this" due to the huge presence of reusable bags in local communities. Administrative manager of the public works department agrees with Stone and predicts "a smooth transition".
This is the first bag ban in Butte County, and makes Chico the 108th city or county to have an adopted bag ban in the state.
Californians Against Waste hopes for this "smooth transition" away from plastic bags to occur on a state-wide level by supporting SB270 for a statewide ban. Take a few seconds to support SB 270 here.
Lanh Nguyen