It was business as usual last week at Huntington Park's Crown Poly Inc., where workers in the brightly lit factory scurried around large, loud machines churning out hundreds of thousands of clear plastic bags per hour.
But all that could change if the Los Angeles City Council has its way.
A day before I visited Crown Poly, the council had voted to ban plastic bags at supermarkets and stores citywide by 2010. The city's ordinance will be enacted if the state fails to impose a pending 25-cent-per-bag charge on shoppers who request plastic over paper.
"Plastic bags are a big problem," said Councilman Ed Reyes, who proposed the ban. "You see them on sidewalks and in gutters, clogging up the storm drains, floating in the river and ocean."
L.A. consumers use an estimated 2.3 billion plastic bags each year. Statewide, 19 billion plastic bags are doled out by retailers annually. Yet only about 5% end up being recycled, even though, in Los Angeles at least, all you have to do is put them in your blue recycling bin.
The plastic bag industry sued Los Angeles County this month over a plan for retailers to voluntarily reduce the number of plastic bags in circulation by 30% as of 2010 and by 65% three years later. If the goals aren't met, county officials could implement an all-out ban on plastic bags.
The industry also launched a website -- SaveThePlasticBag.com -- challenging what it calls "myths and misinformation" surrounding bag use.
"Why pick on plastic bags?" asked Stephen Joseph, a lawyer representing the industry. "They're one of the least harmful things known to mankind."
He also took this newspaper to task for describing plastic bags in an editorial last week as "an environmental atrocity."
"When I hear words like 'environmental atrocity,' I think of Love Canal or Chernobyl," Joseph said. "Not plastic bags."
Clearly he needs to spend a little more time at Compton Creek or the Los Angeles River. Both waterways are choked at times with plastic bags.
But the issue is indeed more complex than pro- and anti-bag forces make out.
At Crown Poly, the nation's leading maker of plastic produce bags and a growing manufacturer of carryout bags, machine operator Eric Gutierrez, 27, said he didn't know what would happen if the L.A. bag ban took effect. He figures at least some of the company's 245 jobs could be eliminated.
"I see a future for me here," Gutierrez said amid the steady roar of machinery. "I'm worried about that now."
