City Council finalizes South Lake Tahoe plastic water bottle ban and updates polystyrene/food packaging ban

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. - The City Council today finalized updates to the South Lake Tahoe Polystyrene and Plastic Food Packaging Regulations, including a tiered ban on plastic water bottles under one gallon in size.

After the last City Council meeting where the ban on single-use plastic water bottles passed its first reading, there has been much public debate about the bottles, something many generations never had. Convenience took over and single-use bottles became popular.

While the updated ordinance was approved, a ban on water bottles will be tiered. All civic uses (the City and those who do business with them at events and buildings) will no longer allow bottles under one gallon in size starting on Earth Day 2023 (April 22), and the retail ban will start one year later on Earth Day 2024.

There will be an exception to the ban in the case of emergency situations and the City Manager will be able to make that call.

Stores can still be able to sell water in cartons, aluminum, or, in one gallon plastic, or larger, bottles. In the meantime, the City will work with partners to put in water bottle refilling stations. During the same meeting Tuesday, the Council approved the submittal of a grant application to CalRecycle for up to $275,000 to purchase and install water bottle refilling stations in the community. The City plans to install the stations at strategic locations throughout the community over the next couple of years and will work with local partners on outreach and education to drive behavior change toward refilling with tap water.

Single-use plastics are a significant source of waste and pollution due to the sheer volume of these products produced and used by consumers and the long amount of time they exist in the environment after their short, useful life ends. Discarded plastics are particularly damaging to water quality as they do not break down or decompose. Instead, they eventually break apart into microplastics that end up washed downstream into water bodies. Through the course of an ongoing study, the University of California Davis’s Tahoe Environmental Resource Center (TERC) recently found plastic in almost every sample taken from beaches around the Lake. Because no wastewater is discharged to Lake Tahoe, most of the microplastic waste appears to be coming from plastic litter, especially plastic bottles and bags.

The Tahoe Water Suppliers Association (TWSA), a consortium of local municipal water agencies, and TERC developed the ‘Drink Tahoe Tap’ campaign to encourage people to embrace the award-winning tap water and ditch single-use plastic water bottles.

“We aim to find ways to support an already robust ‘Drink Tahoe Tap’ marketing campaign and look forward to working with our business community to help them embrace this opportunity to participate in the stewardship of Lake Tahoe,” said Sara Letton, the City’s sustainability coordinator. “The community really stepped up to overwhelmingly support this at the first City Council presentation, but we also heard loud and clear from our business community that they are looking for some support as the ban is implemented.”

In 2013, the City Council became one of the first cities in California to regulate single-use plastic bags, by adopting Ordinance No. 1061.

In 2018, the City Council adopted the Polystyrene and Plastic Food Packaging Regulations, codified in South Lake Tahoe City Code chapter 4.175. This ordinance prohibits “food providers” from providing plastic utensils, straws, or stirrers except upon request, and from providing polystyrene food containers. It also prohibits vendors from selling polystyrene products including coolers, cups, bowls, plates, and packing peanuts, and prohibits the use of polystyrene at City facilities and special events.

The Council vote Tuesday cleaned up the whole ordinance by removing exceptions for hardship and polystyrene raw food packaging.

Some complaints during this process have been from people who say locals and tourists will just buy the plastic bottles elsewhere and bring them into the community, but proponents believe the use of refillable water canisters will become second nature and change will be easy to abide by.

Fines for failure to abide by any parts of the ordinance will start with $100 for a first offense, $200 for a second, and $500 for each offense after those.

Highlights of the ordinance:

Polystyrene ban.
A. No food provider shall sell or otherwise provide prepared food in EPS single-use foodservice ware.
B. No vendor shall sell or otherwise provide EPS foodservice ware or expanded polystyrene products.
C. No person shall distribute EPS foodservice ware or expanded polystyrene products at a city facility or city-affiliated event, and all city concessionaires, lessees, licensees, and permittees for facility use, special events, and temporary activities shall comply with this section. No city funds shall be used to purchase expanded polystyrene products.
D. Products made from expanded polystyrene which are wholly encapsulated or encased by a more durable material are exempt from the provisions of this section. Examples include surfboards, life preservers, and craft supplies which are wholly encapsulated or encased by a more durable material, and coolers encased in hard plastic.

Plastic single-use foodservice ware ban.
No food provider shall sell or otherwise provide plastic single-use foodservice ware except upon request.

Single-use plastic water bottle ban.
A. Effective April 22, 2023, no person shall distribute single-use plastic water bottles at a city facility or city-affiliated event, and all city concessionaires, lessees, licensees, and permittees for facility use, special events, and temporary activities shall comply with this section. No city funds shall be used to purchase single-use plastic water bottles.
B. Effective April 22, 2024, no vendor shall sell single-use plastic water bottles in the City of South Lake Tahoe.
C. The provisions of this section shall not apply in cases of emergency or other city situations where the city manager finds that relying on single-use plastic water bottles is necessary to protect the public health, safety, and welfare, and no reasonable alternative would serve the same purpose, including lack of available potable water due to a natural disaster.