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Even in a small market like Grocery Warehouse, LA sanitation workers are ready to talk to people in 5 languages, a sign of the city's diversity.

Over at the L.A. Times, they’re hailing a step that L.A. City Council took toward banning plastic bags as historic. Over here, we’re not. It seems to be worth explaining why.

First, a bit of history. Richard Alarcon joked today at a press conference before the council meeting: “What took so long?” He made that joke because the idea of a bag ban in L.A. first got kicked around seriously four years ago, and he and then-councilwoman Janice Hahn did a lot of the kicking.

Now, let’s get to why this isn’t historic.

The City of Los Angeles did not pass the first bag ban in the state. That honor goes to the hometown of my favorite baseball team, and their ban was actually the first in the country. San Francisco is actually in a second phase of their ordinance.

The City of Los Angeles did not defend its environmental impact report justifying a bag ban all the way to the state Supreme Court. That honor goes to Manhattan Beach, which argued and won the case last year.

Councilman Ed Reyes suggested it’s time to take this fight to the state. Someone already did, you should know: this fight was lost in the state legislature last year. AB 1998 went down, a bitter defeat for groups like Heal the Bay, whose then-chief Mark Gold blogged about it.

It was also surprising, since there was some implied momentum from L.A. County’s decision to enact a ban (Gold characterized it as methodical).

It’s possible the state fight would have been easier had the City of LA been on board, or taken any action. But the last significant action before AB 1998 was in 2008. Even then, City Council voted merely to take the action of imposing a quarter-a-bag fee…if the state didn’t pass a bill. In other words, they passed a policy. (A policy, by the way, that subsequently was made moot by the fact that the state prohibited municipalities from dinging people a dime for bags.) The plastic bag industry coalition, at that time involved in litigation around the state over actual rules, dismissed the idea of even wasting time on a challenge. And they did so to the L.A. Times. "Why challenge it?" coalition attorney Stephen Joseph said to Times reporter David Zahniser then. "It's not an ordinance."

Neither is what the City Council did today.

What the council has done is approve a project to look at banning plastic bags. It asked city attorneys to draft an ordinance. The project suggests policy outlines, but they aren’t official. For example, a last-minute tweak would give grace periods to large and small retailers of six and 12 months…once the ordinance is passed. No ban, in other words, would be effective before next year. Amendments added in a two-year check-back, which is, again, a policy, not an action.

The council asked the Sanitation folks, after Councilman Garcetti suggested so, to come back in four months with an environmental impact report. Everything I heard from Public Works and Sanitation Dept. officials suggested they could do that if they “piggyback” off of L.A. County’s environmental impact report. The American Progressive Bag Alliance told me that they prefer the City of LA do its own work. Could they challenge L.A.’s environmental impact report if the city takes the shortcut? Yes. Will they? Who knows. Could they win? I don’t know if anyone’s asked the city attorney that question yet. But there’s the possibility of the delay there.

Environmentalists told us in advance of today’s vote that they were going to feel good about a ban in Los Angeles. When it’s enacted, in whatever form it eventually takes, it’s likely to be the biggest city action in the country. It’ll even affect more people than Hawaii’s statewide ban. But it hasn’t happened. Not yet.

[Correction: 9:35am: An earlier version of this post had a broken link to an LA Now blog post. That broken link was not the cause of anything the LA Times did. We didn't have the correct URL.]

David McNew/Getty Images

As the war to end the use of plastic bags at retail POS (point of sale) rages on in cities across California (and America), the most recent of the 50 states, Hawaii, has become the first in the country to outlaw plastic bags outright.

The statewide ban came as a result of Honolulu, the last holdout among Hawaii’s cities and counties, banning usage of the bags earlier this month.

As reported by the Honolulu Star Advisor, the city’s Mayor Peter Carlisle signed off on the plastic bag ban on May 10 after City Council approved it by a margin of 7 -1 late last month. The Honolulu ban goes into effect on July 1, 2015.

But according to Treehugger, loopholes in the bill render it less than 100 percent effective. Running down the laundry list of exemptions cited by KHON 2, plastic bags can still be used to package loose items (produce, grains, coffee, etc.), prepared foods, frozen foods, flowers and even prescriptions.

"We hope people are going to understand that between now and 2015 we're going to be hoping that more and more of them are going to be bringing their own bags to the grocery stores, reducing the problem that plastic bags are already causing," Honolulu Mayor Carlisle said upon signing the bill.

evelynishere/Flickr CC

A pile of plastic bags await recycling.

The current war being waged regarding single-use plastic bags goes beyond just how customers tote their wares out of restaurants and retail stores. It was discovered last year that the American Chemical Council had successfully lobbied California school officials to include positive messages about such plastic bags in the state’s environmental curriculum.

As reported by California Watch, the California Environmental Protection Agency has been allowed to rewrite the curriculum, which no longer includes a section entitled “The Advantages of Plastic Shopping Bags” and has been updated with current recycling statistics.

"Our concern always with the curriculum was to ensure integrity and accuracy," explained Bryan Ehlers, the California EPA’s assistant secretary for education and quality programs to California Watch. "We went back and looked at the whole unit and really picked through it with a fine-tooth comb."

An example of the changes included a statistic that said up to 12 percent of all single-use plastic bags are recycled. The revised text says that such numbers are all but unknown, with an estimate putting it closer to 3 percent.

Ehlers also added that during the revisions, care was taken not to insert any bias “in the opposite direction.”

You can judge for yourself, as the public has until next month (June 4, to be exact) to read the revisions on the California EPA website and submit comments on them. According to the website, all such submissions will be considered before final curriculum updates are posted.

David McNew/Getty Images

A Los Angeles City Council meeting this week moved ahead with the recommendation that all single-use plastic and paper bags be eliminated from the city’s supermarkets and food stores.

As reported by the L.A. Times, the council’s Energy and Environment Committee proposed an environmental review on such a ban as well as an ordinance that would establish it. If the ban were to be approved, stores would have a six-month “warning” period where plastic bags would have to be phased out. Once the ban would theoretically kick in, stores would have to charge 10 cents per paper bag used in any given transaction. Six months after that, paper bags would be eliminated as well, requiring all shoppers to bolster their tote bag collection.

“People will adjust,” said Councilman Dennis Zine to the L.A. Times. “They’ll adapt… and learn to take it with them,” he added in regards to reusable bags.

On the other side of the debate stands plastic bag manufacturers like Crown Poly, who claim their business will be gutted if such a ban were to be put in place, resulting in employee layoffs.

"I will be losing my job, losing my insurance. Please take that into consideration," said Crown Poly employee Norma Fierro to the Times.

Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Taking a cue from the current battle being waged in San Francisco over plastic bags, San Mateo Country is arranging for an outside firm to conduct a full environmental impact report before moving forward on their own bag-banning legislation.

As we reported earlier this week, a coalition of plastic bag manufacturers filed suit against San Francisco for adopting an ordinance outlawing the use of plastic bags at most retail establishments. The Save The Plastic Bag Coalition is suing on the grounds that the city did so without conducting an environmental study and claiming exemption.

According to the Mercury News, the initial San Mateo draft ban would only apply to establishments in unincorporated areas, but a wide range of cities in the county have already said they would be open to considering similar bans.

“We’re very pleased,” said Dean Peterson, San Mateo County’s environmental health director. “It is a regional issue, so doing this regionally is the only way we can really envision a world with less plastic."

Peterson also said that the study could get started before the end of this month, and shouldn’t cost the county more than $50,000.