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 The question is, you have a data point which now is outdated.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 businesses despite the signage thats provided. So that needs to be noted. And just also largely, a lot of the big picture environmental and Public Health laws that San Francisco implements fall on retail. And i am just curious if we arent looking at the right mechanisms and going after the lowhanging fruit instead of being more creative with the policy directives. We are paying for one fee in particular goes to the Convenience Stores pay goes towards the bulk of street cleaning as a whole in San Francisco. We collect cans and bottles which you are familiar with. That c. R. V. Issue. And these are all falling on retail and we need to be aware of that. And lastly, interesting about the restaurant takeaway piece. This is another concern of mine that regulatory license holders like type 20 and 21 and alcohol use and businesses are paying a fee that restaurants that have an alcohol license arent maying. This is another example that retail is paying for more than restaurants. I think that is also a huge problem. If i may respond to some of your comment, thank you, commissioner. I will kind of address them backwards. Starting with the last comment. I think we want to look at the legislation working closely with the Supervisors Office in terms of where if there is a loophole in terms of the rise of the Third Party Delivery apps and in terms of the charges, the charge is supposed to go back to the business. The business implements the charge and keeps the charge, right . So we want to make sure in instance where is there is takeout that those funds are going back to the source of where the product is being made and sold. And so thats something we want to look at to make clear that the business is still earning that charge and keeping the charge in those situations. And we also, one of the big challenges and this goes back to commissioner dwights comments that we face with local policies and in this case is state law. The state has a checkout bag law that went into effect on in effect by the voters in 2016 and it limits our ability locally to address the thicker plastic bags or to assign the charge in a different way. It is designed that the charge applies to all bags equally and that the really only mechanism we have at a local level to address the issue of single use disposable checkout bags is through changing the charge. So we would really like to see and we know many businesses have shifted away from single use plastic or even the thicker reusable plastic. Some have tried compostable and many are choosing to paper. The reality is the law still allows for that thicker, reusable plastic. And we cant mandate anything otherwise per state law. It challenges us from really encouraging a greater shift oiway and what we have committed to doing is as much education and outreach as possible. We are happy to work closely with you and members of the commission to be on the outreach piece and the materials that were going to develop to update and inform consumers. The big challenge i think for us from a policy standpoint is focussing on the consumer responsibility and also the producer responsibility. So we definitely hear the concerns around the impacts to retail and how do we go further upstream in terms of looking at policies that address manufacturing and the production of these materials. And in this case were hamstrung by state law. But were really trying to address the consumer responsibility piece in partnership with the business community. Try to make it a winwin where the business keeps that charge and hopefully were incentivizing and further incentivizing the behavior change from the public and were committed to working. Right. I understand that. Dont get me wrong. I am happy that this is not under line item that we have to pay as a fee. But economics isnt that easy to interpret it as, oh, this is going to be just money back to the Small Businesses because we lose money when our lines get longer and take more time. We lose money when our prices go up and this is a r essentially what is happening. Your lunch is going to be 25 cents more now. And consumers interpret that as this store is increasing their prices. And that is the reality. So i understand that you think its just going to be coming back to us, but it will be indirect loss. And we want to make sure were working as much as we can to educate consumers on the issue and we have heard that concern. And want to make sure were addressing that and whether this is going beyond a posted placard or signage, we feel committed to addressing the Consumer Awareness more broadly and showed some examples of the refuse Reuse Campaign and want to make that part of the culture of San Francisco. And people say, you know what, i dont need a bag. I can carry the sandwich wrapped in the paper. I can carry the beverage and so thats kind of the culture that we are hoping to push forward. So that folks are not kind of experiencing that charge and thinking about the consumer choices. Commissioner ortiz. I want to thank everybody that presented today and just first off the ba bat, were all with the spirit. We might be on the same page, and i dont want to live my grandkids a big pile of plastic, so were on the same page. The purview is to protect and see it there u the lens of the Small Business. As a minority, i grew up in the roughest neighborhoods and the way culturally we shop is different and 25 cents is huge. And snap would be mitigated, but if i am undocumented person, i dont have snap. I am still poor, though. And 25 cents and we shop differently. Mike my mom would have to shop day by day. So 30 days, that is like 7. 50 and to some of the colleagues in their culture, that is not a lot, but to us that is a meal. My woman would buy a potato, and boom, if for 2, we had dinner at least. And i want to put you in perspective with the cultural lens because they are separate. Also, in the bayview, there is food deserts. Again, shopping small. And the way were culturally raised, we dont bring the bag and go and expect a bag because we shop small, for the day, for the meal. I just want to put that perspective and Small Businesses is constantly getting bombarded. Like mee colleague says, it is perceived in our spanish culture, oh, hacienda, again, charging 25 cents and nickel and dime. We could bring all the literature and show them this tape, they aint buying that. Just so you can see that. And then another thing overall thing for me on the whole different note is i dont think i think all our efforts in the city and all the departments, we offer in silos in a way where the big culprit is sometimes the big ride Share Technology app, the gypsy services that are not regulated. A lot of the culture has changed here in San Francisco because of the traffic, so what do we do . We pick up and we get food delivered now. Those are the big culprit. And why do me as the consumer or the restaurant i am shopping for have to pick up the tab . Why arent we hitting up amazon for 2 every single time we place an order. Not either side of the transaction, but them because they are the ones and the ubers and lyfs, causing the traffic and we dont want to go to the neighborhood and we have to call now. So i just want you to put it in perspective. But i know you probably got kind of hit up today. We dont want plastic either. Trust me. Even the cocommissioner dwight, probably the first one that doesnt want plastic. Were with you. We just got to work on. The checkout part is fine. 25 cents were trying to grasp. Yeah. Commissioner riley. Yes. I am with my colleagues. I support the second part of the legislation. I think its good idea. But i wanted to ask whether or not you have done recent study in terms of behavior. How many people still not bring the bags . And where do we want to be . And to determine whether or not this 15 cent increase is necessary. And do we have any plant to take a look at t