We want to get their attention. With respect to the equity issue that you raised, it is foremost on supervisor browns mind and really sort of one of the primary concerns along with Small Businesses and the impact on them that this legislation would have. And were one, if you are shopping with snap benefits, you are already excluded from this charge. So our lowest income folks who are shopping on food stamps and the like, they are not going to see a bag charge ever. And the other, we ransom quick numbers back of napkin for how many times we expect and i think the department can speak to this we are talking like 40 a year even for the if you are yeah. Even the precheckout bags and that i support and i have supported that. But just that 25 cents is just i im sorry, just be im sorry. But i will let the department of environment speak. Thank you. Ill stick around. All right. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is alexa kelty with department of the environment and i thank you for listening to this item. Peter, our policy person s going to load the presentation for me. And i also wanted to thank supervisor Browns Office for their leadership on bags and all their other Environmental Policies that they are working on. We really appreciate it. So its going to be a bit of a review from what juan carlos already covered. So i will breeze through this quickly. But essentially last Year National geographic and many of you know there is a plastic crisis. Were producing too much plastic. And National Geographic last year on the cover came out with an article and the front page article on the plastic crisis. And there is 700 million tons of plastics going into our ocean annually. The only way to get to this issue is by turning off the faucet. Recycling ourselves out of this issue is not going to work. 9 of all the plastic ever produced on the planet is recycled. The rest is landfilled or ending up in the environment. We need to look at how can we really reduce plastic from being produced to begin with. Juan carlos mentioned the proliferation of the thick plastic bags. The state legislation allows for reusable plastic bags, so even though we have banned the tshirt bags, the thin, cheap plastic bags, there was kind of a loophole for the thick, reusables. And more stores are choosing to go this route as opposed to paper because they can either charge for paper or they can charge for the plastic. So were seeing more stores kind of deciding the plastic is a better way to go. Some of the motivation is getting at how can we reduce the usage of the thick plastic bags. And so as you know, this legislation proposes to take the charge from 10 to 25 cents and that was mentioned earlier is 10 cities doing 25 cents and even small cities like the city of gonzalez. And santa clara county, they are doing 15 cents. The rest are already at 10 cents. And that 10 cents sorry t25 cent charge at check and you see a 90 reduction. And that is what we are driving toward to get to that 90 reduction, and the city of santa cruz is already at that 90 reduction and the country of ireland is at 90 reduction. Where are we . We are looking up the baseline number. I believe we are between 60 and 90, and i can get exact numbers to you at another time. I dont think we have them here. That is a big range. If we were at 90, this would have zero effect. True. I will get back to you on that. The second part of this as you all know is prohibiting the plastic precheckout bags defined as any bag distributed before the point of sale for produce and meat and bulk items. And another thing were seeing that is motivating us to work towards this prohibition is a lot of the produce bags being put into the compost bins and the residential setting. So of course, folks want to wrap their food scraps as a cheener way to contain the food scraps and on the way out of the buildings, typically apartment buildings will drop off the food scraps wrapped in plastic. Hopefully we can redoes some of the contamination. Stores will give out the b. P. I. Certified compostable bags on the left side or paper. Check choose to charge if they like, but that is not in this ordinance. Were hoping with the proliferation of more access to compostable bags that will make residen residents easier to increase the compostable action and there is the increase of composting. Businesses that are impacted would be farmers markets and Grocery Stores and we did have a conversation regarding hardware and they can use paper bags for the nails and small items. And produce markets, of course, would be effective. And as mentioned, we our department will be doing lots of outreach to the Business Community and doing a city wide mailer to all businesses affected by the ordinance and make the placards available to that Business Community doesnt have to always be communicating directly to the customers. So the placards will say 25 cent charge on bags. And they will be available. We will also have the Outreach Team called environment now out covering the business corridors and talking to the Business Community directly. And specifically targeting mono lingual businesses. We have already done given out 25,000 bags in the past. Particularly targeting low income communities, seniors, and limited english communities. We will be doing that again in partnership with supervisor Browns Office. And continue the city Wide Campaign which is getting consumers to be responsible and bringing their own bags, reminders. This all really fits under the overall goals and we have pivoted away from zero waste into generation reduction. So one of the big goals is not stop telling people, but focus the attention on what were reducing as opposed to the energy into recycle and compost more. This is about the 10 overall generation reduction goal that was announced by our mayor during the Global Climate summit. We also wanted to thank the Business Community, the Small Businesses in particular, whofsh fantastic partners in recycling and composting with a huge amount of work in that area. Way over 90 participation in the composting programs and really the city wouldnt a deserving community and so we thank you. I am happy to take any questions. Commissioner dwight. Well, i shop in a market that provides compostable bags for produce, and i will say that we use them, so testimony to the fact that it does generate good behavior. I want to get back to the point, and just going to make this statement and you dont have the data to today to talk about, but we were promised by the first speaker a big bump in the reduction of disposable bags. We then explored the experience of some other places like ireland that have experienced and now have 90 rates of reduction, and its never going to be 100 . It is the nature of the world. 90 may be the maximum. We dont know. But to say its San Francisco is from 60 to 90 percent is no way to go into proposing a piece of legislation. If it is 90 , you are there. This is done. The first piece was successful. Focus on the important part of the legislation which is not the 25 cent increase but, in fact, the replacement of nonReusable Bags in the produce department. Okay . Lets not conflate the issues here. If we are good citizens on the First Initiative what was to get rid of them at checkout, start moving back in the stream the way you are. But dont put in this legislation something that will have zero effect and will cause a great deal of confusion. Frankly, i dont care if its 10 cents, 25 cents, or a dollar personally because i bring Reusable Bags. I am already a convert. You are preaching to the converted and taxing not me. And so if everyone else is already got religion, then all youre doing is causing a controversy at the checkout for our merchants. What do you mean its a dollar . What do you mean its 25 cents . Its always been 10 cents. I dont care what it is because i am not affected by it, but how come you are changing it . We dont need that conversation 10,000 times times three, five, 20 sektdz seconds to have that conversation to make a productivity hit on the merchants and the ability to get people in and out of the stores. If you have ever waited in line at the market, 10, 20 deep, the last thing i want to hear is people arguing about, what they are getting charged for their bag and making that line take 50 to 100 percent longer. So i really object when people come in here and make quantitative try to put forward quantitative arguments with nothing but qualitative information with no data. The data exists. You have it in other countries. If you are really wanted to be thorough, you would bring the data with you. Okay . And so we are here to help you do better legislation. And good legislation has good frame work, Good Foundation. This one to me doesnt seem like a Good Foundation yet. If you have the data, great, go get and bring it back to supply to everybody. All right. May i respond . Thank you. Thank you, commissioners. Im peter golata Public Policy and the San Francisco department of the environment. Thank you for your comments, commissioner. I just want to clarify on the data piece. In the findings of the proposed legislation t department of environment did an informal survey after the 10cent charge went into effect in 2012 and we found we had about a 60 Adoption Rate at that 10 cents. So we know that based on the data that we have from other cities and that have implemented the increased charge that they are see tag go to 90. Of course it is an additional incentive. It is a 15cent additional incentive. The question is, you have a data point which now is outdated. Good news. Since that time, there is a huge amount of press about this z opportunity and for me to tell my friend, what, you didnt bring a bag . What an idiot. Fits still 60 , i should be shocked. Ill bet it is higher than that. What is it . Do another informal study . I appreciate your optimism. It has been years. We are challenged with the Consumer Behavior and the level op consumption that we are facing San Francisco which is why my yor breed and generation is exploding in the city and even since 2012, we are seeing greater consumption with people purchasing and the Amazon Effect and people are purchasing more from a takeout standpoint as well. We also are seeing an increase in bags for takeout and delivery. We have done some followup on implementation and compliance with the business comment. We are seeing great compliance for the most part amongst businesses. We are about 8 o of the businesses that we have surveyed and are compliant in terms of charging for the checkout bags. Takeout and delivery is a special use case. It is a carve out in the previous legislation, is it not . They have special dispensation for food related products. The exception under the current law is for if you are dining in store and you are you have leftover food and you would like to take it home with you, you are not charged for that bag. However, if you are coming in to a Food Service Establishment and you are making a togo purchase, if a bag is provided, that charge should be implemented. That is fine. But why dont you go after making those bags compostable to be used the same way as the produce department . You have, one, an enforcement and compliance issue. And you have a different issue which is going after the source. Taxing people simply to change their behavior is not good enough. It is providing a viable alternative because people are embracing those alternatives. They are embracing Reusable Bags and compostable bags. One of the arguments against compostable bags is they are more expensive. Fine. We have to bear the burden somewhere, but that is a compliance issue. Why not focus on the source . You are focussing on behavior and that is notoriously difficult to modify without providing viable alternatives. You just told me we have a behavior problem with increase in use, but you havent actually convinced me. We have apparently High Compliance in the area that you have already addressed. I think you are not addressing the areas where the increases are happening. There is a huge increase in takeout. Its been driven by the technology industry. You need to go address it at the source. Okay . The source is not the consumer. The source is the Technology Companies and the providers of those services and they need to change their behavior. They need to have an incentive to provide compostable bags. Just telling people not to use bags anymore is not going to solve the problem. I would say, just to respond to that, commissioner, i think we have the department is very well versed our department is committed to behavior change. That is the corner stone of our departments work. And we are very familiar with the how Consumer Behavior can be changed. And we have found that the reason that we accompany these charges on materials or items has a big impact in terms of driving further behavior change. There has been we can provide further studies to you on that matter, but it is one of the most effective tools that we have. The study is not there. The problem is the study is not there yet. I dont want to argue this any further. You provided outdated data and a big bump, but we dont have a quantitative number. If its 5 because we are at 85 , that is a lot different than if we are at 60 and going to get to 90 to get a 40 bump out of a 15 bump. That is all i am asking for and that data, can we agree that that data is not available today. Because the number at 60 is several years old. And you dont know what the compliance is today. Unless you are doing another informal study. I would suggest, and it would be great if you would do that for the public of San Francisco so we can know whether wereing with good or not. That would be useful. I would like to know if the neighbors are good. Im done. Commissioner laguana. I respectfully disagree with my colleagues. I commend supervisor browns efforts to do something about the Environmental Crisis that is looming and approaching and causing ever more problems. I guess my question would be, has there been any consideration to make this provide some sort of cola adjustment so that we dont have to keep revisiting this periodically . That is a great idea. By the way, i am not saying do nothing. I am saying do the right thing. I hear you. Appreciate that. We discussed it early in and it was hard to find a mark to set the colas at. It felt like and were hoping for sort of a world in which this is not something we are revisiting still in 20 years. And all i would say is for matters as simple of initially addressing this issue, we sort of passed on the cola, but i think its worthwhile and sort of good concept and i think its worth exploring further with the department. Okay. I appreciate that. Keep an eye open for that. I would just say in general when confronted with multifactorial problems that are dense and challenging, sometimes you just have to throw everything and the kitchen sink at it. Certain certainly my experience than introducing cost can and does change behavior. Clearly it changed behavior in 2012 and i i remember how much people were upset about that at the time. But i think it had an impact then. Since then ill note that the minimum wage has the increased by approximately 3 well, in a couple days now, 3. 59 an hour. So given that most grocery expenses are fairly infrequent, i think that the cost factor here is largely diminished and the awareness factor is really whats important. Certainly every time i go to a grocery and ask if i eel pay extra for the plastic bag, it gets me thinking about the issue again. And i think thats an important component. I also commend the supervisor on crafting a bill that did not does not materially effect Small Business and allows the stores to keep the money and it seems to me that it merely decreases the cost that probably isnt where they see a lot of profit to begin with. So from my perspective, i think its a good bill and i would like to see more of it and in more areas. Commission zouzounis. Thank you, all, for your presentation. I have a couple of questions. It was my understanding that weve already banned plastic bags in San Francisco, and i know you said there was an exception, but in the industry that i am most familiar with, the Small Convenience stores and the grocers, my familys business in particular, we made that full switch and we ate the cost of buying paper bags that are stronger with handles at three times the price as the bags that were banned. So in that sense, i do feel like were being punished for that conversion in particular. So my question is, maybe big grocery trips are less frequent, but we have customers that come in every day. So are we administering this charge for also daily paper bag uses . This isnt just associated with the heavy plastic bags, right . We charge this for regular paper bags as well . Peter, department of environment. Thank you, commissioner. Yes, so any checkout bag transaction if it is a paper bag that is provided to the customer for collecting their items to depart, would be subject to the ordinance and so the paper bag would be subject to the 25 cent charge. Okay. Thank you. And i know thank you, juan carlos, for your conversations on this because one thing that we were dealing with as merchants prior with the 10 cent charge is we had to do our own we made our own signs. Because we werent provided with outreach material. And either way, i like to eare mind policymakers that who havent worked behind the counter or arent familiar with the human error that is part in the dialogue that is entailed with being in retail, this will no matter how much outreach you do, we will have to our lunch rush will be slowed down. We will have to have these conversations. And it will affect busine