Tomorrow, December 2, the Santa Barbara City Council will review the Ordinance Committee’s recommended changes to single-use plastics, including the prohibition of all plastic carry-out bags at grocery stores; the release of latex balloons and the sale, use, and distribution of Mylar balloons; the sale of plastic and Mylar confetti; and the sale of single-use plastic water bottles eight ounces or smaller.
At restaurants, any food or beverage consumed on site would have to be served on reusable foodware. (“Exemptions would be available on a case-by-case basis for businesses that cannot obtain access to adequate dishwashing capacity.”) For takeout, any disposable foodware and cutlery would need to be compostable within the City’s collection programs.
On one hand, I’m doing everything I can to use as little “disposable” plastic as possible, and I wish other people would do the same—and wishes only go so far. On the other hand, legislating this kind of thing at the city level seems like a well-intentioned overreach, with enforcement tricky at best. Is the full-time Code Enforcement Officer hired by the Sustainability & Resilience Department going to hunt down people who release balloons? And round up purveyors of plastic confetti at Fiesta?…