TITLE
Recommendation to declare ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code by adding Chapter 8.62 relating to regulating the use of plastic carryout bags and recyclable paper bags, and promoting the use of reusable bags, read and adopted as read. (Citywide)
DISCUSSION
At the City Council meeting of December 7, 2010, the Council requested the City Attorney and City Manager to develop an ordinance duplicating Los Angeles County's adopted ordinance for unincorporated cities regulating the use of plastic carryout bags and recyclable paper bags, and to complete any required review pursuant to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) prior to submitting the ordinance.
An addendum to the County's EIR was prepared setting forth the potential environmental impacts specific to the City of Long Beach and concluding that the project would not result in any significant environmental impacts in any of the areas studied. CEQA does not require publication of an EIR addendum. Nevertheless, the City provided a twenty-day "courtesy" publication period to allow public review and comment, ending April 29,2011.
The ordinance is substantially similar to the County's ordinance. The ordinance is intended to reduce the environmental impacts related to single-use plastic and paper carry-out bags and to promote the use of reusable bags in the City. The ordinance's provisions include the following:
• The distribution of plastic carry-out bags will be prohibited and a ten-cent per bag charge will be placed on the distribution of recyclable paper carryout bags by an affected store, as defined.
• The stores that will be affected are:
o full-line self-service retail stores with gross annual sales of $2 million or more, that sell a line of dry grocery, canned goods or non-food items and some perishable items; or
o stores of at least 10,000 square feet of retail space that generate sales or use tax pursuant to the Bradley-Burns Uniform Local Sales and Use Tax Law and th...
Click here for full text