LOS ANGELES – Los Angeles is joining other communities around the country by banning plastic bags beginning with the new year on January 1, the Los Angeles Times reports. The ban will be rolled out first at stores with more than 10,000 square feet or that have more than $2 million in annual sales. Starting July 1, plastic bag use will be prohibited at smaller retailers, such as convenience stores.

Plastic bag bans have caught fire in California lately, with around 90 cities or counties enacting them in recent years. “I think we have all seen a push throughout the world to get rid of disposable items like these plastic bags,” said Paul Krekorian, a councilman who sponsored the ban in Los Angeles. “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.”

Los Angeles launched a campaign last month to get residents to buy or acquire reusable totes in lieu of plastic bags. The city has given out close to a half million reusable bags to residents ahead of the ban’s implementation. Retailers may sell paper bags for 10 cents each.

Meanwhile, the plastic bag industry has continued to question bans, especially targeting the validity of whether such measures actually lower littler and cleanup costs. “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,” said Kathy Brown, general manager of Crown Poly, a company that makes plastic bags.

“It won’t save the city millions of dollars. It is only 1% 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,” she said.