LOS ANGELES (CNS) - All Los Angeles restaurants would be banned from automatically giving customers plastic straws under a proposal coming before the City Council today.
A citywide straws-on-request-only ordinance would be drafted for possible implementation in 2019, and the council is also set to decide if it wants to explore a complete ban on plastic straws by 2021.
Councilman Mitch O'Farrell is one of the proposal's backers, and said he wants Los Angeles to go further than a bill, recently signed by Gov. Jerry Brown, banning full-service restaurants from automatically giving customers plastic straws beginning Jan. 1.
Under a proposal approved by the council's Energy, Environment, and Social Justice Committee in October, the Bureau of Sanitation would be instructed to report back within 90 days regarding the feasibility of phasing out single-use plastic straws by 2021, and to work with the Department of Disability on methods and approaches to mitigate impacts to the disabled community associated with the phase-out.
The committee also moved to have the city attorney draft a plastic straws-on-request ordinance applicable to food and beverage facilities with more than 26 employees effective Jan. 1, and applicable to all other food and beverage facilities effective July 1 of next year.
The motion for the straws-on-request ordinance cites a Los Angeles Times editorial which stated that Americans use -- and almost immediately discard -- up to a half-billion plastic beverage straws each day.
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