Mill Valley to Consider Local Plastic Bag Ban

On the heels of a court ruling upholding Marin County’s plastic bag ban in unincorporated areas, Mill Valley is following the county’s lead. The City Council is set to review a resolution of its own Monday night.

The draft ordinance includes a ban on single-use carryout plastic bags, and a 5-cent fee for paper bags. It would apply to grocery stores, pharmacies and convenience stores, and would affect about 10 locations in Mill Valley including Safeway, Whole Foods, CVS, Rite Aid and Jolly King.

If approved, there will be a 60-day grace period before it’s enforced, and all potentially impacted retail stores, as well as the Chamber of Commerce, have already been notified, according to the City Council staff report by Senior Planner Danielle Staude.

“The Marin County Model Ordinance provided a six-month grace period, however, staff feels 60 days is an adequate timeframe to work with stores and notify the public,” Staude said.

The initiative follows a lawsuit filed by Save the Plastic Bag Coalition, which argues that the county violated the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) by passing the January 2011 ban without completing an Environmental Impact Report (EIR) first.

The plastic industry coalition claimed that the life cycle of paper bags result in 3.3 times the greenhouse gas emissions than plastic bags, and an EIR would’ve proved that a 5-cent fee wouldn’t be enough to dissuade shoppers from using paper bags.

The county prevailed in Marin Superior Court, and the group appealed the case. During the appeal process, in November 2011 the City Council adopted a resolution “declaring single use carryout bags an environmental concern,” but stopped short of implementing its own ban, taking a ‘wait-and-see’ approach instead.

In June, the California First District Court of Appeals upheld the Superior Court decision, paving the way for other communities to take on the issue without the threat of a costly lawsuit.

The ban is one of the pieces of a countywide Zero Waste initiative to divert 100 percent of its waste from the landfill by 2025. It gathered steam under the late Mill Valley resident and Marin County Supervisor Charles McGlashan.

After the court decision, his wife Carol Misseldine told the Marin Independent Journal her husband would have been proud, and that "many of the cities and towns in Marin County have been waiting for this ruling, and it's likely that many of them will now adopt their own bag ordinance.” 

San Francisco, San Jose and Manhattan Beach are among other communities that have a ban, along with Fairfax — which was faced with a lawsuit over an ordinance approved by the town council, but avoided the legal challenges by bringing it directly to the voters in 2008.

After discussing the proposed ordinance Monday at 7:30 p.m. in City Hall, the Mill Valley City Council plans to schedule a public hearing in September.