Plastic Bag Ban in LA

Categorie(s): City life, News, Sustainable projects, Waste

The Los Angeles City Council voted   June 18, 2013 to approve a ban on single-use plastic shopping bags.  The ban will go into effect for large stores on January 1, 2014, and for smaller stores on July 1, 2014. Paper bags will not be included in the ban, but stores now have to charge 10 cents per paper bag.  

When the ban goes into effect, one in four Californians will live in a city that bans single-use plastic shopping bags, according to the environmental group, Heal the Bay.

There is good financial reasoning behind the ban. Only five percent of single use plastic bags are recycled every year across the state. California municipalities spend almost $25 million a year to collect and throw away plastic bags that litter the streets and clog storm drains. Currently there are almost two billion plastic shopping bags and 400 million paper bags distributed every year in Los Angeles. Los Angeles joins other Southern California cities which have banned plastic shopping bags, including Long Beach, Calabasas, Santa Monica, Pasadena,. A total of 76 state municipalities have such bans and dozens of others are considering enacting bans.

“Today, our city became a model for our state and the rest of the nation,” said Kirsten James, Heal the Bay’s Science and Policy Director for water quality. “The vote further emphasizes that the time has come for us to move past the wasteful convenience of a plastic bag to sustainable reusable bags.“

From:  ENN June 21, 2013, by: Gina-Marie Cheeseman

Los Angeles is not the first city to ban the bags, other cities and countries did the same earlier.

In the item Bring Your own Bag on this site, you find an older but still very useful presentation abuout the problems behind the bags