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By Wyatt Buchanan
San Francisco Chronicle

Attention San Francisco shoppers: Plastic grocery store bags are going, going, gone.

Starting Tuesday, large grocery stores in the city can no longer use the traditional plastic bags that are a staple of the supermarket checkout line, as a city ordinance passed earlier this year to ban the bags takes effect.

"People are used to getting free bags and thinking there is no real consequence to them, but there is a cost," said Jack Macy, commercial recycling coordinator for the city’s Department of the Environment, which is implementing the new policy.

The 180 million plastic bags city officials estimate are handed out in the city each year end up as litter on city streets, clog storm drains, harm wildlife, and contaminate and jam machines used in recycling, Macy said.

And then there is the giant patch of plastic floating in the Pacific Ocean that scientists are monitoring, estimated to weigh 3 million tons and cover an area twice the size of Texas. The patch is about 1,000 miles west of San Francisco, but plastic dumped in the ocean here can end up there.

Under the new policy, passed by the city’s Board of Supervisors in March, only retail businesses and smaller grocery stores will be able to hand out the bags.

Six months from now, pharmacy chains will also have to comply. The policy will be the first enacted in the United States - Oakland passed a similar ban that goes into effect early next year and London and Paris both have followed San Francisco’s lead - and Macy said city enforcement will start Dec. 1.

Stores that don’t comply face fines starting at $100 for a first violation. Penalties increase to $200 for a second violation in the same year and to $500 thereafter.

Stores can still use plastic bags so long as they are a special type that are compostable. Bags must now be made of at least 40 percent high-grade recycled paper, and many stores are using bags made from 100 percent recycled paper, Macy said.

Few, if any, stores offer compostable bags to customers, though. Those bags are biodegradable, and Macy cautions people not to throw them out with the regular garbage but instead to put them in the green city waste bins. When they are available, the city will require the compostable bags to be clearly marked.

Paper bags can be placed in the traditional blue recycling bins.

At grocery stores across the city, where sale displays of reusable canvas bags are becoming increasingly prominent, many shoppers said they welcome the change to a paper-dominant checkout line.

"I like them," said Bill O’Brien, who was shopping at the Cala Foods at California and Hyde streets in the city last week. The store has already switched entirely to paper bags. "They are easier to carry and you can put more in them."

O’Brien, who lives at a senior housing center on O’Farrell Street and has been in the city 40 years, said he sees more and more discarded plastic bags on the streets. He now uses plastic bags to line garbage cans at his home, but said, "I’ll start using those, I guess," pointing to a paper sack in his shopping cart.

His acceptance is not universal, though. Richard Casey, who has lived in the city 20 years, followed him out of the store and minced no words.

"I think it’s an idiotic utopian notion, which is typical of the Board of Supervisors," Casey said. At the store, the checkers double-bagged nearly every item, he noted, adding, "I can’t help thinking paper uses more resources than plastic."

The debate at City Hall over paper versus plastic has taken several years to get to this point. In 2005, city officials first considered charging a fee for each bag used by shoppers, but that idea never got off the ground. Grocery store owners then told city officials they would reduce the number of bags they give out by 10 million, but the city was not satisfied with that effort.

Before officials could take a second look at the fee, the state Legislature passed a law at the urging of the California Grocers Association to bar municipalities from imposing such a charge.

Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi then introduced legislation to ban the bags altogether, which passed the board and was signed by Mayor Gavin Newsom earlier this year.

"It was really the only choice," Mirkarimi said. He said the resistance from grocers resulted from their being "creatures of habit."

"Part of that habit is imposing the cost of convenience on customers and city governments," said Mirkarimi, who added later that he is considering a "menu of possibilities" for further measures. He would not say what those are, though, because of the experience with the bag fee.

While the absence of plastic bags may be a radical change in many parts of the city, the Rainbow Grocery Cooperative on Folsom Street has not offered customers plastic bags since it opened in 1975, said Dennis Wagner, one of the store’s seven directors.

The store encourages customers to bring their own bags, as well as using their own containers for produce or bulk foods.

"We’ve got a clientele that already thinks that way - we don’t have to shove it down their throats," Wagner said.

Outside the Rainbow store, Merijane Block loaded the canvas bags and woven baskets she uses for shopping in the back of her car and said she is glad that more residents will soon be plastic-free.

"As usual, San Francisco does things better," she said.

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