California Bans Plastic Bags

Acting on what the Los Angeles Times describes as "a flurry of new bills," California lawmakers have voted to ban single-use plastic bags at supermarket checkout stands. (Retailers will still offer paper bags, but those will cost a nickle each.) We've come a long way since San Francisco became the first city in the country to ban the bags—whose ghastly environmental impact far outweighs their utility—in 2007.

For a state that uses 19 billion of those bags a year, this is big news. For Californian shoppers, it looks like there's finally incentive to stop leaving your reusable bags at home.

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Oh, and there are even rumors of a United Nations led global ban down the road.

Photo: A close-up of some of the 60,000 plastic bags used in the United States every five seconds, from Chris Jordan's series, "Running the Numbers".

Via Gawker