L.A.'s Ban on Plastic Bags Expands to Smaller Grocery Stores Tuesday

Originally posted at 9:26 a.m. June 30, 2014. Edited with new details.

Los Angeles' ban on plastic grocery bags will expand to smaller grocery stores starting Tuesday.

The single-use plastic bag ban went into effect in January for thousands of supermarkets, drugstores and convenience stores such as Ralphs and Vons; CVS, Rite Aid and Walgreens and 7-Eleven.

Smaller shops were given six more months to adjust to the new law. Starting Tuesday, the ban will also apply to about 5,000 shops with less than 10,000 square feet of retail space or that gross less than $2 million annually in sales. These stores, including liquor stores, usually carry a limited selection of grocery products such as milk, bread, soda, snack foods and dry goods.

Paper bags are still available at grocery stores large and small, but cost 10 cents each. Proceeds from this charge will be kept by stores and can only be used to recoup the costs of the bags and comply with the city ban. It is also meant to pay for materials to promote reusable bags.

Not all plastic bags are banned. Clear plastic sacks for produce and meat, as well as bags for pharmacy items, will still be available and free to shoppers. Restaurants, department stores and other shops that do not carry grocery items are exempt from the ban.

Grocery retailers could be fined for each day they violate the ban -- $100 for the first violation, as much as $200 for the second, and up to $500 for the third.

City Councilmen Paul Koretz, whose office spearheaded the effort to ban plastic bags in Los Angeles, called the expansion to smaller stores "the sequel" to the ban at major grocery stores that started in January.

"In part two, beginning tomorrow, these flimsy, polluting, choking plastic bags will no longer be allowed at the little mom-and-pop stores either," Koretz said.

City officials declared the first six months of the ban a success, saying compliance with the ban has been widespread at the big or top-grossing stores.

Koretz said he has observed that plastic bags have "vanished" from the streets in recent months. Critics of the non-biodegradable plastic sacks say that, in addition to being unsightly, the bags take up space in landfills and hurt ecosystems in oceans and streams.

Each store must make quarterly reports to the city on the progress of the ban, including the amount collected from the 10-cent paper bag charge, said Enrique Zaldivar, director of the Bureau of Sanitation.

The city has received three complaints during the first six months of the ban, Zaldivar said, mostly arising from misunderstandings of "where and when the ban would be applied" and were quickly resolved.

The second phase of the ban will be bigger than the first, which affected 2,500 mostly chain and franchise stores, according to Zaldivar.

The phase beginning tomorrow affects 5,000 stores that are mostly individual mom-and-pops, he said.

"There's no single uniform way of reaching out to them through some corporate venue," Zaldivar said.

City officials also announced efforts to promote the use of reusable bags.

Koretz unveiled the winner of Mayor Eric Garcetti's reusable bag logo contest. The line drawing by graphic designer Melodie Pisciotti depicts the City Hall building set against a backdrop of mountains and palm trees.

The city received $25,000 from Metabolic Studio, which is affiliated with the Annenberg Foundation, to make and distribute bags printed with Pisciotti's logo.

Each bag costs about $5 the make, which means they city can distribute about 5,000 bags using the donation from Metabolic, according to Koretz spokesman Andy Shrader.

An online-based, crowd-funding campaign is also being launched on the web-site Kickstarter to continue funding what the mayor and Koretz called the L.A. Epic Reusable Bag Giveaway.

The bags will be made by Homeboy Industries and Green Vets Los Angeles and distributed by groups like the Los Angeles Conservation Corps and California Greenworks.

The Bureau of Sanitation has also given away more than a half-million free bags over the past five years using money from a recycling trust fund, according to Zaldivar.

Free reusable bags are being given out at 20 stores around the city, including La Tropicana in Highland Park, Whole Foods in Sherman Oaks, India Sweets & Spices in Canoga Park and El Super in Wilmington.

The Los Angeles City Council passed the ban last June, making Los Angeles, with its close to 4 million residents, the most populous city in the nation to do so.

The city joined Los Angeles County and a long list of other cities that already have bans in place, including Long Beach, West Hollywood, Culver City, Huntington Beach, Malibu, Santa Monica, Glendale and Pasadena.

In 2007, San Francisco became the first city in the nation to adopt a plastic bag ban.

An effort by state Sen. Alex Padilla, a former Los Angeles city councilman, to take the ban statewide is also in the works.

His bill, SB 270, would address long-running concerns that a ban may lead to job loss among plastic bags industry workers, while ensuring single-use plastic bags no longer "fill our landfills, clog inland waterways, litter our coastline and kill thousands of fish, marine mammals and seabirds."

Under the bill, plastic bag businesses would be able to apply for loans or grants to help them transition into manufacturing reusable bags, with the caveat that the companies keep the same workers, Padilla said.

--City News Service