Bring your own bags
Banning take-out styrofoam was so 2011. For the second year running, Weekly readers cheer the laws against single-use plastic grocery bags – and the cities of Monterey and Carmel-by-the-Sea are already on board. The result? Once-ubiquitous littered plastic bags are disappearing from those cities’ beaches, despite the desperate efforts of the lawsuit-happy Save the Plastic Bag Coalition. (We swear that’s not a joke.) Here’s hoping the rest of the county follows Monterey’s lead. Because unlike sea turtles, whales, seabirds, dolphins and seals, the plastic bag is one creature we’d be happy to see go extinct.