No Right to Plastic Bags?

This past week, the Los Angeles City Council passed an ordinance imposing a 25 cent fee for the use of each plastic carry bag in commercial establishments. This ordinance will go into effect in July of 2010, which should leave people with plenty of time (24 months) both to obtain a canvas bag and to remember to bring it/them to the market, etc. And yesterday, the Seattle City Council joined the effort, with a 20 cent fee, starting in January of 2009. The Seattleites will have to make a concerted effort to get those bags together and into their cars in only five months, as opposed to L.A.’s 24 month conditioning period. Is it possible that we’ve reached a tipping point?

In other news on the plastic bag front: at the beginning of July, the Toronto Globe and Mail reported that a Canadian teenager had developed a method to make plastic bags decompose in months rather than years by using high concentrations of bacteriae that could be introduced into landfills. Somehow, it’s hard to believe that this method was so complex that plastic bag manufacturers couldn’t figure it out in the past, say, 50 years, but high school students could. But then, I’m not particularly knowledgeable about the chemistry of plastic bags or about the quality of Toronto's teen-aged chemistry students.

If Point Roberts had a local government, it could join this sensible move and add to the momentum. Since it doesn’t, I guess people could just start bringing cloth bags. Or would that happen only if some government made them do it? What would explain that?