As Trump’s EPA rolls back environmental protections, San Francisco’s stance on zero-waste plastics might be its most defiant policy yet.
Ever since The City’s 2002 Resolution Adopting Zero Waste Goal resolution was set in stone, San Franciscans have been on a mission to rid our city streets and public parks of pesky single-use plastics. Since doing so, we’ve become something of a role model; a sustainable eco-city of which to mold environmental policy from. Now some fifteen-years-later, we’re still holding the proverbial torch, leading the masses on a mission to rid our landfills of recyclable plastic waste.
In 2014 alone, San Francisco put into effect it still controversial city-wide ordinance that many hailed as an important ploy in developing practical and sustainable guidelines at-scale for large, popular urban events regarding plastic waste.. How so, one might ask? By addressing the egregious, glutinous use of single-use plastic bottles totted by such popular music and film festivals like Outside Lands and Treasure Island Festival.
The Bottles
"San Francisco now has the one of the strongest common-sense bottled water policies in the country," said Lara Derusha, senior national campaign organizer with Corporate Accountability International. As of October 2014, it is a citable offense to distribute or sell single-use, 21-oz or smaller water bottles on events held on city property.
But minor infractions often still pass through the cheesecloth veils of public policy. By labeling any drink as a “sports drink or brewed tea,” the above criteria does not apply to their containment: the argument is that they’re not “pure” water, so are not required to follow rules for water bottles. This leads to products sold under such labels as Sobe LifeWater, Gold Tea, Propel and so on, to squeeze through the standards shackled by “pure water bottle products.”
Regardless of the latter caveat, the ban is still cutting off the sales of thousands upon thousands of water bottles at such events—and, likely, preventing what would’ve been littered plastics from contaminating our water supplies.
The Bags
Our love for convenience, too, has crept into the seas. Plastic bags have helped foster ever-growing dead zones in and around the Bay Area, not to mention trapping, at times suffocating countless marine organism in their buoyant, absentminded wake.
Proptistion 67—a piece of legislation that banned the use of all single-use plastic bags from California marketplaces—was largely footed by both private and office-holding citizens alike, going even as far back as 2007. A decade later, that once diluted idea of not allowing only a handful of market chains from using them has now come full-circle.
“This is a huge win that goes way beyond plastic bags,” said Mark Murray, executive director of Californians Against Waste, shortly after the bill went into effect this January. “This makes a strong statement in terms of send a signal to polluters that might be eyeing to overturn other California environmental laws.”
The Beads
San Francisco played a major role in the passage of the state’s 2015 Assembly Bill No. 888 which aimed the thwart any manufacturing and utilization of “microbeads” in the state of California. Microbeads—the textured, orbital bits of milled plastic used in exfoliating face washes and laundry detergents—are responsible for wreaking havoc across ocean fronts, including right here in San Francisco Bay, where they’ve created their fair-share of dead zones.
In one of the most comprehensive studies on the plastic pollution circulating in the San Francisco Bay, scientists from the SFEI (San Francisco Estuary Institute) found that in 2015, as much as 4 million micro beaded plastics were being spilled into the over six large wastewater treatment plants across the Bay Area. To put that number figure into perspective, that’s a higher concentration density of plastics than anywhere found in the Great Lakes, Mississippi river, and Chesapeake Bay.
But, finally, the San Francisco Bay and the riparian environments surrounding it seem to be bouncing back.
Hats off to you, San Francisco. May you continue to ecologically prosper and inspire others to do the same.
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