While the City of West Hollywood unanimously approved a ban on plastic shopping bags Tuesday, a Los Angeles City Councilmember attempted to take the ban one step further — to ban both paper and plastic bags.

Thousands of plastic bags were used to illustrate the pollution they can cause when the Board of Supervisors passed a ban last November. (photo by Edwin Folven)

Los Angeles City Councilmember Paul Koretz, 5th District, introduced a motion Tuesday that would only allow retailers to offer reusable cloth bags to customers. According to the motion, only five percent of plastic bags, and 21 percent of single-use paper bags, are recycled. Koretz claims he uses reusable bags every time he goes to the store, and said he does not believe it is an inconvenience for shoppers.

“I have a car full of the bags, more than I can use,” Koretz said. “I know some cities have been looking at the issue of plastic bags, which is an issue I have been trying to address since I was in the legislature. We have a tremendous amount of waste worldwide from our use of plastic bags, and it is completely unnecessary waste. But there is also a tremendous amount of waste caused by paper bags. We should recognize both are wasteful, and create a tremendous amount of litter, and should take the next step to eliminate both types of bags.”

Koretz added that the Bureau of Sanitation and the City Attorney’s Office will now formulate a plan for implementation, and the motion will return to the city council’s Energy and Environment Committee at an unscheduled future date. It has yet to be determined how the ordinance would be enforced, and whether the retailers would have to shoulder the costs of the bags. The motion stated that the city has distributed approximately 200,000 free reusable bags to residents, and Koretz said he is confident people can obtain reusable bags, either for free, or at a minimal cost.

“I anticipate it will take quite a while for this to go through the process, but it is something the city has been looking at for years, and we wanted to get the process started,” Koretz added.

West Hollywood city staff is gathering input to create a plan for implementation. The proposal is scheduled to return to the city council for more consideration in January. The ban in West Hollywood, and the proposal in the City of Los Angeles, follows a ban on single-use plastic shopping bags approved by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors for unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County last November.