It’s in the bag

PAPER OR PLASTIC? It’s one of the most profound existential questions of the last half a century, comparable to few others: Nature or nurture? East or West? Koufax or Drysdale?

OK, so maybe it isn’t all that profound. But the dilemma is there every time you go to a supermarket: You can stuff your groceries in a paper sack and then put it in a recycling bin. Or you can go plastic -- but making those bags uses up precious petroleum, and a shockingly large number of those empty bags find their way into trees, waterways and, fatally, the insides of ocean creatures. If only there were another way.

And of course, there is -- if only our county and cities could figure it out. In San Francisco, they’re banning plastic takeout and grocery sacks in favor of compostable bags made from potato starch. Leaders there seem to want to pretend that their new mandate on grocers won’t cost consumers anything. But at least they took a stand.

In Los Angeles, where the sun shines, there remains a certain fogginess of thought and action on the paper-or-plastic conundrum. France, Ireland and Taiwan have cracked down on plastic bags, but so have nations as varied as Rwanda, Bangladesh and Bhutan. L.A. can’t go that route because the city doesn’t compost food waste, and the county doesn’t pick up compostable anything separate from the rest of the garbage.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to study the issue. But in the process, it illustrated just how far this region has to go even to raise awareness of what its residents can already do to turn the pollution tide. Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, for example, an author of the county motion, noted that, as a resident of the city, she can’t put plastic bags in her recycling bin. She’s wrong, actually -- but the city Bureau of Sanitation hasn’t done much to tell her (or her constituents) that. City residents can keep their plastic bags out of landfills by putting them in their blue bins.

The region can make progress if the city and county coordinate their policies. They simply have to talk to one another. Maybe they can begin by asking whether they prefer paper or plastic.