Los Angeles

The city of Los Angeles, California, as part of an incentive to help eliminate single use plastic bags from grocery stores, has instituted a new scheme with the help of Heal the Bay to give shoppers a reason to bring their own bags. According to an article by David Carini in the Marina Del Rey Patch, the city of Los Angeles and Heal the Bay have organized a "Day Without a Bag" during which shoppers who elect to bring their own bags from home will be entered in a draw to win a $100 Vons gift card.

The Los Angeles Times reported yesterday that a shipment from China containing 35,000 rubber ducks dressed in Santa, Reindeer, and Gingerbread man outfits was detained by US Customs officials after it was determined that the chemicals present in the ducks exceeded the safety threshold for children's products. According to an article by Adolfo Flores, the ducks contained dangerous levels of phthalates -- chemicals used to soften plastics that have been found connected to endocrine disruption. Writes Flores:

An article on Plastic News.com authored by Mike Verespej states that in five months, the number of bag legislations have grown to almost double what they were before, indicating a serious turn in the way people concieve of the need for this single-use commodity. So far, the plastic bag industry has been helpless to stop large cities such as Seattle, Washington, Austen, Texas, and most recently Los Angeles, California, from creating bag bans, but some in the industry still believe that plastic bag bans must be refuted.

In an unprecedented move for a large city, Los Angeles became the largest city in America to ban plastic bags at the checkout. The ban passed city council's vote 13-1, and was supported by a number of environmental groups, as well as the actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Council members have expressed a desire that the ban should promote a cleaner Los Angeles river, and David Zhaniser reports that Councilman Ed Reyes is keen to push the message further, saying "Let’s get the message to Sacramento that it’s time to go statewide".

Last Friday, The Plastic News ran a story on a United States Superior Court judge from Los Angeles who rejected a challenge on the county's preexisting ban on plastic bags and 10 cent tax on paper bags. The challenge, which was made by Hilex Poly, a plastic bag manufacturer, attempted to claim that the ban violated State Proposition 26, which aims to prevent hidden taxes without majority votes in the House of Representatives and the Senate, as well as in the communities the tax is being adopted.