Angeles shoppers will no longer be presented

After Jan. 1, Los Angeles shoppers will no longer be presented with that checkout choice: Paper or plastic?Instead, they will be required to bring in their own reusable bags or pay 10 cents for each paper bag they need.The city's plastic bag ban will start with stores of more than 10,000 square feet or with annual sales of more than $2 million. Then,The punctures are too small to recognize with german uniforms the naked eye. beginning on July 1, the ban will extend to smaller stores such as mini-marts.Los Angeles is joining a growing trend of cities across the country — in California alone, about 90 cities or counties have passed plastic bag ordinances within recent years, according to the group Californians Against Waste."I think we have all seen a push throughout the world to get rid of disposable items like these plastic bags," said Los Angeles City Councilman Paul Krekorian, one of the backers of the ban. "We use them for about 15 minutes and then it takes hundreds of years for them to break down. We in the United States use about 200,000 plastic bags every hour.They're two different kinds of tough, said institute shoes manufacturer student Andrew Worgul, who visited West Point. 

"And the city has to spend millions to clean up the damage caused by the bags through litter or clogging up storm drains or in the water. We shouldn't be squandering that money, which can be spent on other things."Krekorian said the city has done about all it can to make the public aware of the coming regulation and that he would like to see more from the stores.The plastics industry has tried to fight the growing trend of banning plastic bags with a variety of studies questioning the science behind the bans and whether they reduce litter and municipal costs for cleanup. 

Kathy Brown, general manager of Crown Poly, a Carson-based firm with 300 employees, said the only way she sees the ban being overturned is if the public revolts."It is very difficult to fight them when they are banning a program for non-scientific reasons and charging the consumers for something they used to get for free," Brown said. "It won't save the city millions of dollars. It is only 1 percent of the trash going in to landfills."They didn't ask people who take the bus or walk or ride a bike about the ban. This makes it more difficult for the disabled."The public is going to have to revolt to wake up the Legislature that they are taxing people for something with no real environmental benefit.Volunteers are an essential part of Targa, he says, "and without them there is Zipper Corsets no way that an event like this can run smoothly."