AB 1998 Sacramento Bag Ban Press Conference 11/29

Here are some of the stand out points that the Governor made during his speech at the press conference I was at last Monday:

"We (CA) is very proud that we are always trying to TERMINATE (oh yes, really) the dirty pollution that we have been talking about today."

Facts he mentioned that I was glad to hear him include:

CA uses 120,000 tons of plastic bags a year.

(I know that a plastic bag weighs only .25 OUNCES because I weighed one recently.)

Only about 5% gets recycled

(That means 950 million bags, leaving out of the 18.05 BILLION that we use. And most of the "recycled" bags are shipped overseas to Asia where they are burned in open air facilities to melt the plastic...more on this later)

It is estimates that 80% of all Marine Debris is plastic

(let's call it what it is shall we - Marine LITER, or Marine POLLUTION, or something else that doesn't make it sound natural. Debris could be sticks and leaves. Plastic is toxic.)

Julia Brownley is from Santa Monica (Where I live! A little Santa Monica pride over here...)

Her speech was great! You should take a minute to watch it.

She congratulated LA County for banning the bag and said that if, "LA County were a state, it would be the 8th largest one." Feeling good about the progress that we just made.

She also mentioned that she was in Paris recently and there were no plastic bags there. The list of other countries that have already implemented a bag ban, or tax is long and diverse.

But the majority of what I filmed where student voices. Next post with what they had to say coming right up!