San Francisco bans traditional plastic grocery bags
Wednesday, March 28th, 2007San Francisco has become the first city in North America to ban the use of traditional plastic grocery bags, a step that municipal leaders hope will spread across the country.
Passed Tuesday by the city’s board of supervisors, the law prohibits large grocery stores and drugstores from using non-recyclable and non-biodegradable plastic bags made from petroleum products.
Supermarkets will have six months to comply while drugstores will have up to one year.
The city legislator who introduced the bill, Ross Mirkarimi, said that up to 200 million plastic bags are used each year in the city of roughly 740,000 people.
It’s estimated a traditional plastic bag takes 1,000 years to dissolve.
“The first order of conservation is reduction and what we want to do is reduce the non-recyclable plastic bag,” Mirkarimi said.
