At Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting, Supervisor Katy Tang introduced new legislation that would ban the distribution of plastic straws and some other non-biodegradable odds and ends, in another City Hall drive to clean up San Francisco’s chronic trash problem.
Tang announced the proposed new law at a Tuesday morning press conference outside of a Boba Guys cafe on Fillmore Street, where she declared “straws suck.”
“We are setting the trend for the rest of the country to follow,” Board President London Breed, also on hand, told the Boba Guys crowd.
Single-use plastic straws are a source of chronic litter and, later, bay contamination. According to a press release from Tang’s office, “In San Francisco alone, it is estimated that one million straws are used every day. [...] Single-use food and beverage packaging was found to be 67 percent of Bay Area street litter going into the Bay.”
The source for that claim is a 2011 trash profile by the Washington DC-based environmental group Clean Water Action, which hauled some Bay Area garbage to find out what it’s made of, although the report did not single out straws specifically:
Volunteers and staff captured nearly 12,000 pieces of trash littered on streets in commercial districts within four cities. [...] Take-out food and beverage packaging comprises the most significant type of trash on Bay Area streets. It was 67 percent of all trash collected; food packaging comprised 48 percent and beverage packaging was 19 percent.
National Geographic reported in February that America goes through roughly 500 million single-use plastic straws per day and that they pose a particularly insidious threat to marine ecology:
Small and lightweight, straws [rarely] make it into recycling bins; the evidence of this failure is clearly visible on any beach. And although straws amount to a tiny fraction of ocean plastic, their size makes them one of the most insidious polluters because they entangle marine animals and are consumed by fish.
We use 1 million plastic straws in SF every day. Proud to stand with @SupervisorTang and Supervisor @Ahsha_Safai to support legislation that will take San Francisco one step closer to #zerowaste -- protecting our bay and ecosystem for the next generation. pic.twitter.com/5Gm8wNEJyt
— London Breed (@LondonBreed) May 15, 2018
The proposed ban would “[prohibit] the distribution and sale of plastic straws as well as plastic stir sticks, plastic toothpicks, and plastic splash sticks.” If it becomes law, the ban will take effect in July of 2019.
Cities like Malibu, Davis, San Luis Obispo, Alameda, and Santa Cruz have already banned plastic straws. The California State Assembly is considering a law that would make it illegal for restaurants to give out plastic straws unless customers specifically ask for one.
There’s been a lot of shuffling at City Hall to take the initiative about garbage issues in SF, with lawmakers and the Mayor’s Office debating the likes of street cleaning and needle recovery.
- Taking Out The Trash [Clean Water Action]
- Fighting Discarded Plastic [National Geographic]
- Plastic Straw Bans [NY Times]
- AB 1884, Straws On Demand [California Assembly]
- Farrell Promises Street Cleaning [Curbed SF]
- City Hires Ten For Syringe Cleanup [Curbed SF]
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