Audrey and Ted Brodnicki are used to the idea of bringing their reusable bags to the store.

"Today you have to watch out for everything," says Brodnicki. "Back home in Canada there's a five cent charge for every plastic bag you take home - if you don't bring your reusable bag with you."

What they didn't realize, was the potential risk of lead lurking inside. "The bags I use don't have as much lead, but they are saying certain bags do, and I don't really want to carry a bag with lead," says Audrey Brodnicki.

The Center for Consumer Freedom tested nearly 50 bags from various stores nationwide looking to find who was over the limit. "I think this is the unintended consequences of feel good policy making. So many consumers have been goaded into switching and now it turns out the sacred cow of the environment movement of the reusable shopping bag kind of has its own problem," says J. Justin Wilson, Senior Research Analyst for the Center for Consumer Freedom.

Some common chains made the list, CVS had almost six times the legal amount with nearly 700 parts per million. Walgreens came in at number eight with nearly 300. Staples' and Piggly Wiggly's were in the top twelve.  "It's not necessarily an immediate toxic danger, but we've spent billions of dollars trying to rid lead from our world and I think consumers should take pause and say maybe this isn't the greatest solution everyone told me it was," says Wilson.

Now, the Center for Consumer Freedom says they're not releasing this data to stop the green initiative, they just want to make sure consumers like you and me realize, we might be getting more than we bargained for if we're not careful.

Under the Environment (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2011, which was published this week, any future minister for the environment will have the flexibility to introduce a levy increase up to a ceiling of 70 cent by ministerial order, but a spokesman for Mr Gormley assured consumers no such price rise was envisioned.

“The legislation has to include a cap on how much the levy can be; we have to state the maximum but that does not mean it is going to increase to that maximum.”

He said 70 cent had been explicitly stated to provide the department with “breathing space” should the levy need to be increased in the future either to keep it in line with inflation or to ensure it continued to act as a deterrent on people using plastic bags.

“It has never been a revenue-generating levy and it will only increase if we see the number of plastic bags being used increase,” the spokesman said.

While the Department of the Environment has always insisted that the aim of the levy is not to generate revenue, it has generated more than €150 million for the exchequer since it was introduced in 2002. When it came into being the levy was 15 cent a plastic bag. This resulted in a dramatic reduction in usage from 328 bags by each person every year to 21 bags.

By June 2007, however, usage had increased to 33 bags a person and the levy was increased by seven cent to 22 cent in July of that year.

Consumption dropped again, to 26 bags a person, for the next six months but had risen steadily since.

Officers responded to the attempted robbery at a Wendy's in the 2800 block of East Imperial Highway just after 8:45 p.m. Monday, Fullerton police Lt. Tom Basham said.

A man with a brown plastic bag over his head pulled up to the drive-thru window in a "small" vehicle, pointed a black handgun at an employee and demanded money, Basham said.

The employee responded by shutting the drive-thru window and walking off, Basham said, and the would-be robber drove away in an unknown direction.

Employees were unable to provide a detailed description of the suspect or the vehicle

They said the use of plastic bags had gone down when the regulation on restricting the use of these bags came into effect in 2008, but the trend began to reverse recently.

The Ministry of Commerce, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and the State Administration for Industry and Commerce had jointly issued the Regulation on Compensated Use of Plastic Bags in Retail Stores in May 2008. It stipulated that retail stores should charge for plastic bags provided to customers, and failure to do so would attract a fine up to 10,000 yuan ($1,507), the Xinhua News Agency reported.

The regulation, which came into effect on June 1, 2008, is referred to in media reports as the "plastic bag limitation order" as it aims to reduce usage of these bags to save energy and protect the environment.

Initial impact good

According to statistics released by the NDRC in May 2009, the use of plastic bags in malls and supermarkets fell by 75 percent in the first year after the regulation, Xinhua reported.

"In the past two years, the plastic bag industry has been hit by a sharp drop in demand," Zhou Shumin, deputy general manager of the Beijing-based Huanlüdi Plastic Production Factory, told the Global Times Monday.

The factory's gross income from plastic bags used to surpass 70 million yuan ($10.5 million) a year before the regulation came into force. Now the annual income is under 20 million yuan ($3 million), according to Zhou.

Figures from the Beijing-based International Food Packaging Association (IFPA) showed that the number of plastic bags used in agricultural product markets declined to 1.5 billion per day in late 2008. However, it has rebounded to 2.5 billion per day now, which means each Chinese uses more than one plastic bag every day.

Experts and environmentalists doubt the effectiveness of the regulation as its execution has gradually slackened in the past two years.

Dong Jinshi, secretary-general of IFPA, told the Global Times Monday that although nationwide half the plastic bag factories stopped production or switched to other products in the second half of 2008, most resumed production last year and some are producing poor quality thin plastic bags for bigger profit.

"In open fairs and agricultural product markets, the use of plastic bags rebound-ed greatly after a short period of decline," said Dong.

Zhang Xin, owner of a five-square-meter fruit and vegetable stand in Fengtai district, Beijing, said that he spends about 300 yuan ($45) per month to buy 5,000 plastic bags to give free to customers.

"I do not want to pay for the plastic bags but customers will not come to my stand any more if I start charging for bags," said Zhang.

Tang Tian, a Beijing resident in Chaoyang district, understands that the regulation is good for the environment and always brings his own bag for purchases. However, he never refuses free bags provided in open fairs as he needs them to separate meat, grain and fruit.

Weak enforcement

An Ming, deputy director at the market supervision division of Kunming Industrial and Commercial Bureau, Yunnan Province, told the Kunming-based New Life Newspaper earlier that they have lim-ited law enforcement officials to be able to supervise every single open fair, and the small amount of fine is insufficient to stop the use of plastic bags.

Dong said weak enforcement is the main reason for rebound in

plastic bag use. He wants the authorities to tighten supervision over administration of open fairs, and not focus on each single vendor.

According to a survey by Beijing-based EnviroFriends Institute of Environmental Science and Technology, a non-governmental organization, in August this year, only 26.3 percent of some 700 open fairs in Hangzhou, Zhengzhou and Harbin do not provide free plastic bags at all, while 60 percent of them always provide free plastic bags to costumers.

"I am not optimistic about the effect of the plastic limitation order because the public are gradually getting used to paying for plastic bags and do not have adequate awareness to reuse plastic bags", Wen Hengfeng, spokesman of Bag Changes Big, a Beijing-based non-governmental environmental protection organization, told the Global Times Monday.

"It takes at least 200 years for one plastic bag to degrade in the environment. Can you imagine how long it will take to degrade billions of plastic bags that Chinese people use everyday," said Wen, adding that large quantities of plastic bags not only add to city waste piles, but are also a high-pollution item in coastal areas.

The Bag Changes Big calls for lesser use of plastic bags and any one-off packaging product including paper bags.

"Rising prices of packaging has limited effect on reducing plastic bag use. We should continue to promote and publicize environmental protection ideas among the people for compliance with regulations," Wen added.

The fee has been an effective tool at getting consumers to switch to more environmentally friendly bags, says Jo-Anne St. Godard, executive director of the Recycling Council of Ontario.

“If Mayor Ford is serious about revisiting the 5-cent fee, that’s a bit scary to us,” Goddard said. “Are people going to carry on that habit? I think you’d see it slide back significantly.”

But another group, representing independent grocers, says the program should be scrapped.

“We have from day one opposed the city dictating what a retailer should charge a customer for any product, be it a plastic bag or a can of soup,” said John Scott, president and chief executive officer of the Canadian Federation of Independent Grocers.

“If the city wants to impose a charge, then it should be a tax and all the revenue generated should be earmarked to the environment,” Scott added.

Ford, who campaigned on an anti-tax platform, has reportedly said he plans to review the plastic bag program this year. A lot of people have asked him to scrap the fee or show them proof where the money goes, Ford said.

Calls to the mayor’s office weren’t returned.

The city created the fee, which is mandatory. But retailers collect and keep it and aren’t required to disclose how it’s spent

The Canadian Council of Grocery Distributors, which represents the big supermarket chains, said the fee has been a success at cutting plastic bag use by 71 per cent in its members’ stores.

Some supermarkets have linked the program to new environmental campaigns. The country’s largest supermarket operator, Loblaw Cos. Ltd., has committed to give $1 million a year for three years to the World Wildlife Federation.

But retailers won’t reveal how much the fee has raised or whether it’s all earmarked for environmental projects.

The Canadian Plastics Industry Association, which says the bags cost between a penny and a penny-and-a-half, estimated earlier this year the program had raised $15 million for retailers.

Toronto is the only jurisdiction in Canada to adopt a mandatory fee to discourage plastic bag use. However, several national retailers have extended the fee to their stores across Canada.

Three provinces — Ontario, B.C. and Alberta — all have voluntary bag reduction programs that commit retailers to reducing bag use by 50 per cent within five years.

Research from Sweden's University of Gothenburg found that the 3,000 consumers surveyed in Beijing and Guiyang used an average of 21 new plastic bags per week before China began requiring stores to charge some fee in June 2008. After the ordinance, they used 49% fewer bags and almost half of them were re-used.

"Our results show that this is an effective policy instrument that can be used to benefit the environment," study author Haoran He told Science Daily. "What's most important is to make sure that the ordinance is complied with." Four months after its implementation, Haoran He says 60% of all plastic bags were still given away for free, according to the story.

• Follow Green House on Twitter

In Washington, D.C., stores began charging a nickel in January for each disposable bag and managers have since reported a drop in bag sales. Ireland's plastic bag tax, begun in 2002, has reduced usage to about 20 bags per year per shopper, compared with 330 bags per year before the fee, reports Science Daily.

Recently, Los Angeles County Supervisors voted 3-1 to bar stores from giving out the bags and requiring them to charge 10 cents per paper bag. The new rule applies to unincorporated parts of LA County that are home to 1.1 million people, but not to the cities, including L.A. itself.

Banning plastic bags is a severe move, but hardly novel. Cities around the world and even some entire countries have done it in an effort to curtail the bags' harmful effects on the environment. They end up entangled in shrubs and tree branches, in waterways where they can choke or strangle wildlife. Decaying slowly in landfills, they reduce slowly, over decades or even longer, to ever-smaller plastic granules. Scientists are still exploring whether these granules build up in sea and land animals, becoming an unnatural part of the food chain.

Pennsylvanians have tried to act. Currently languishing in the state General Assembly are a Senate bill and a House bill that would ban grocers from providing free paper and plastic bags to shoppers. Call your representative and senator and encourage them to act.

Meanwhile, it's encouraging that many grocery chains, including ShopRite, promote reusable cloth or plastic bags. ALDI charges for its bags. Gradually, more people are bringing their own bags when they shop. That's a good trend, wasting fewer resources and producing less waste, too.

Lightweight plastic bags have myriad practical uses but there is little dispute that their sheer numbers have created major environmental problems. It's up to us as individuals and community leaders to mark a different course. Plastic bags' convenience shouldn't come at the cost of the beauty or health of our natural world.

"I don't like things that are disincentives for customers," said Larry Pearson, owner of Pacific Cookie Company. "Charging them for bags—that is the biggest problem for me."

More than a dozen people, including many business owners in Santa Cruz like Pearson, spoke out Monday night at the Santa Cruz's Transportation and Public Works Commission meeting on the issue of the proposed plastic bag ban.

But despite the objections of many of the business owners, and a lengthy debate over potential changes to the ordinance, the commission voted to recommend it as written.

Bob Nelson, superintendant of resource recovery for the city's Public Works Department, said the 10-cent charge is a key aspect to the ordinance.

"When you put a fee on it, it actually deters people from taking that bag," he said.

And the whole point of the ordinance is to encourage people to use reusable bags.

"That's really what the big push for this is," said Nelson. "We would encourage retailers to make reusable bags available for reasonable price."

Similar measures are being considered in other local cities including Capitola and Scotts Valley. Santa Cruz County is also considering a similar measure.

"Our ordinance is pretty close to what everybody is looking at throughout the county," said Nelson. "We wanted to create a level playing field, so that it is not more difficult to shop in Santa Cruz."

But business owners urged more consideration.

"I would suggest that more input from businesses like my own would be helpful in tailoring this for things that might occur," said Pearson.

Colin Mackenzie, of Mackenzies Chocolates, voiced concern about the plastic bags he already purchased—enough to last the next two years.

"I would ask that there be a dispensation to use of the bags that we currently have," he said.

Charlie Keutmann, owner of The Garden Company, noted that it's difficult to transport wet, soggy aquatic plants in paper bags.

And Stan Lieberman, of Marianne's Ice Cream, said that the ice cream he serves sometimes needs extra bags.

"If someone who asks it go over the hill and wants it double- or triple-bagged, do I have to charge them 30 cents?"

Yes, he was told.

Santa Cruz's proposed ordinance differs from several others across the state that are already in place—the ban would effect restaurants.

Several restaurant owners said putting containers of food into reusable bags was a recipe for food-borne illness.

"We need to make sure that we cover the issues of food safety with people that enforce that," said Richard Lowe, who runs several local Taco Bell franchises.

The main issue is that plastic bags are given out for free and often unnecessarily, thus resulting in a lot of waste and rubbish.

However, under certain circumstances, they come in handy. Therefore, instead of an outright ban, the policy should aim at charging for plastic bags.

As such, I advocate for the policy to be tweaked towards charging for plastic bags for certain cases while continuing to give them out for free in others.

Human beings are prone to forgetfulness. While it is a good practice to always keep a spare bag when we are out, sometimes we forget and an urgent need arises to shop for groceries.

Going home specifically to get a bag is impractical as it is time and resource-consuming. As such, supermarkets and hypermarkets should charge for plastic bags, may be 10 sen for a small bag, 20 sen for a medium bag and 30 sen for a large bag. A penalty to remind us to bring a bag next time.

Not all premises are suitable to be plastic-bag free, such as in food outlets. How are we supposed to carry the hot and sometimes oily food? A more effective way is to charge extra for take-out using a plastic bag. This will encourage us to bring our own food containers.

It is unnecessary to ban plastic bags for mini-markets as the quantities given out are insignificant. A side note to allowing mini-market owners to continue giving out plastic bags is that it might entice the public to shop more often at these outlets instead of hypermarkets, thus helping to protect small businesses.

We will still have a use for plastic bags. For example, it is commonly used to pack litter in households. The problem is that there are too many of them and each household is probably stuffed full of plastic bags right now.

Banning plastic bags on certain days only sends a mixed message and creates confusion. We certainly do not need to remember a set of dates to shop or bring plastic bags or not.

If the state government is really serious about reducing waste and pollution, perhaps it should put in more effort to increase recycling and developing clean and green industries.

For example, a good idea is to ensure that each apartment block or residential street is equipped with recycling bins. An efficient collection system that runs regularly is also needed. Perhaps the collection system can be subsidised by private companies which are then given these recycled materials to manufacture new products e.g. recycled packaging and containers, etc.

More incentives are needed to develop clean and green industries, which will create new jobs and determine the fate of our economy in the coming decades as resources are running out.

So, why are plastic bags being banned and how did they get such a bad reputation?

Well, here are just some of the amazing facts about a simple item we use briefly, and the immense impact they have on the environment.

Plastic bags are made from polyethylene, which is a petroleum product.

The creation of these bags lead to air pollution and energy consumption.

Each year, between four and five trillion bags are made, and only one percent of these are recycled.

Canadians account for roughly 90 billion bags, while Americans account for 380 billion each year.

Americans will throw away about 100 billion per year.

Each bag takes 1,000 years to break down but they are only used for an average of five minutes each.

When the plastic bags break down, the substances in them, which are sometimes toxic, will enter the soil and get into ground water and the food chain.

Each year, one billion sea mammals, fish and birds die from ingesting plastic bags. When they eat the plastic bags, their stomachs become full.