Small Grocers Now Have to Adhere to LA’s Ridiculous Plastic Bag Ban

On Tuesday, the second wave of Los Angeles’ plastic bag ban

went in to effect as small grocers are no longer allowed to
offer customers plastic as an option to carry their goods.

While the bag ban passed last year, city officials implemented
the law in phases—on January 1 larger retail chains were prohibited
from carrying the offending plastic bags. Now, smaller retailers
and corner stores will have to follow suit. 

The ban is intended to help the environment, but opponents say
that banning plastic bags will hurt the economy and that paper bags
are actually worse for the environment. 

In 2012, Reason TV’s Kennedy—now a host on the popular Fox
Business show The Independents—went down to LA’s City Hall to ask
council members why they wanted to outlaw plastic bags. “LA Bans
the Plastic Bag,” produced by Zach Weissmueller and Kennedy was
originally released on June 2, 2012. The original writeup is
below. 

Plastic bags: faithful transporters of groceries, liners of
wastebaskets, pickers-up of dog crap and inspirers of late nineties
Hollywood screenwriters, now banned from grocery stores by the Los
Angeles City Council. But why?

Reason.tv’s Kennedy paid a visit to LA City Hall to find an
answer to that question. Council members stood by the ban, despite
being confronted with evidence that bag bans have no discernible
effect on the health of the environment and make up less than 1
percent of California’s waste stream.

“When you’re looking at 1 percent, that’s a huge difference,”
says Councilman Alarcon, who voted for the ban. 

Reason contributor Jay Beeber points out that a similar ban in
San Francisco failed to reduce the small number of plastic bags
actually littering the street. 

“This is just feel-good legislation,” says Beeber. “It’s not
going to solve any problems, but it makes people think that we’ve
done something.”

Still, council member Tom LaBonge feels that he served his
district well by outlawing plastic bags at grocery stores.

“That one percent [of plastic bags in the waste stream] pollutes
the river,” says LaBonge. “You want to go out to the river with me?
I’ll show it to you.”

Approximately 4:43 minutes.

Interviews by Kennedy. Shot and edited by Zach Weissmueller.