Yes on Proposition 67 – Talking Points

 

Yes on 67 is good for the environment and for taxpayers

  • Single-use plastic bags are damaging to the environment and wildlife, expensive to clean up, and an easily preventable source of litter.
  • The Ocean Conservancy recently deemed plastic bags as the #2 deadliest threat to sea turtles, birds, and marine mammals.
  • Plastic bags eat up taxpayer dollars in cleanup costs. Local governments across the state spend $428 million each year to prevent litter in streets and storm drains.
  • Less than 3% of plastic bags are recycled, and rather they jam most recycling equipment.
  • Prop 67 is the last statewide on the ballot, but the most important for our oceans, rivers, and parks.

Yes on 67 reaffirms legislation signed by Governor Brown

  • In an attempt to mitigate an easily preventable form of plastic pollution, Senate Bill 270 (Padilla, De León, Lara) was adopted by the Legislature and signed by Governor Jerry Brown establishing a statewide ban on the distribution of single-use plastic grocery bags at most stores in 2014.
  • It was the culmination of a five-year effort that included the adoption of numerous local bag bans and the support of local governments, environmental groups, grocers, retailers and labor organizations.
  • Prop 67 asks voters to affirm statewide legislation that phases out single-use plastic grocery bags and requires stores to pass along the 10 cent cost of paper bags.

 

Yes on 67 bans plastic bags in California once and for all

  • Immediately after SB 270 was signed, out-of-state plastic bag manufacturers spent more than $3 million on a paid signature gathering effort to qualify Proposition 67 for the November 2016 ballot for voters to decide its fate.
  • This postponement of the law has resulted in the continued distribution of more than 192 million single-use plastic bags every week. Today, these manufacturers have spent over $6 million, and are expected to spend $25 to 40 million more in order to protect their profits.
  • The plastic companies behind this attempt to hijack our state’s referendum and initiative system have a disastrous environmental record, including pollution by one Chinese-based firm, Formosa International, which caused one of the largest fish kills ever recorded.
  • As part of their last ditch effort to overturn the bag ban, the out-of-state bag manufacturers have put a competing measure on the ballot (Prop 65) the Mercury News described as “one of the most disingenuous ballot measures in state history–and that’s saying something.”

 

Yes on 67 has already shown to be effective

  • Plastic bag bans work. Today 151 California communities have them. In all of these cities and counties, bag use declines as customers bring their own bags, as well as plastic bag litter that blow out of trash cans, solid waste vehicles and landfills into streets, parks and waterways.
  • California’s environmental leadership has been challenged and we cannot allow a monied special interest to succeed in an ‘end run’ around our hard fought environmental victories.