San Francisco Bans Reusable Shopping Bags Amid Coronavirus Fears
San Francisco first banned single-use plastic bags in 2007. It was the first major city to do so, more than a decade before New York, the most populous U.S. city, followed suit in 2020.
Under the appendix of an updated shelter in place order are "measures to prevent unnecessary contact" for businesses to take. Among them is the following: "Not permitting customers to bring their own bags, mugs, or other reusable items from home." The restriction aligns grocery stores in line with coffee chains like Starbucks, which put a temporary ban on reusable cups last month.
"This fear of bringing reusable bags into the stores is misguided, but I certainly understand why store employees don't want to handle somebody else's things," Mark Murray, executive director of Californians Against Waste, told Politico. "I wouldn't have any expectation that somebody is going to put my groceries into my bag that I brought from home."
According to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine by a team of researchers at the CDC, NIH, Princeton, and UCLA, the new coronavirus can live on cardboard for up to 24 hours and up to 72 hours on plastic. While aerosols, copper, and stainless steel were also reviewed in the study, cloth was not.
The move comes as Politico reports lobbying by the plastics industry tied to the virus:
The plastics industry has lobbied on the federal level and in New York, New Jersey and other states, asserting that often-unwashed reusable bags are hotbeds for the coronavirus, which early research suggests can remain on surfaces. But so far, there hasn't been evidence of industry lobbying in California.
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