The Los Angeles City Council voted on Tuesday, June 18 to approve a ban on single-use plastic shopping bags. The Council voted 11 to 1 in favor of the ordinance, and a final vote is scheduled for this week. Last year, the Council voted 13 to 1 to move forward on banning 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 and 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 are distributed every year in Los Angeles.

 

Los Angeles joins other Southern California cities which have banned plastic shopping bags. There are cities in other parts of California that have enacted bans on plastic shopping bags. A total of 76 state municipalities have such bans and dozens of others are considering enacting bans.

 

Single use plastic bags were first introduced into the U.S. market in the 1950s for certain food products, but by the 1970s they were commonplace as single use shopping bags. Flash forward to the 21st century where the environmental impact of single-use plastic shopping bags is well known.