California Governor Jerry Brown passed a landmark bill on Tuesday banning plastic shopping bags from stores around the state, according to The Associated Press.
The law would ban grocery stores from handing out such bags with customers' purchases and provide money to local plastic bag companies to retool to make heavier, multiple-use bags that customers could buy, the AP reported.
Under the new law, grocery stores and pharmacies are required to stop providing single-use plastic bags by July 2015, while convenience and liquor stores will have an additional year to phase them out, according to the AP.
"This bill is a step in the right direction - it reduces the torrent of plastic polluting our beaches, parks and even the vast ocean itself," Brown said in a statement, according to the AP. "We're the first to ban these bags, and we won't be the last."
A number of cities and counties in California and other U.S. states, including Hawaii's Maui County, have made it illegal for grocery stores to pack purchases in plastic, but at the state level, opposition from plastic bag makers has usually prevailed, the AP reported.
More than 10 billion plastic bags are used in California each year, according to an estimate by Californians Against Waste, an advocacy group that supports the law, according to the AP.
Environmentalists have pushed to ban plastic bags, which are cheaper for supermarkets to use than paper bags but create mountains of trash that is difficult to recycle, according to the AP.
Plastic bag manufacturers claim the law will have a "very negative" impact on plastic bag manufacturers, possibly leading to layoffs, said Cathy Browne, general manager at one such manufacturer, Crown Poly, in Huntington Park, Calif., the AP reported.
"We're obviously disappointed that it's been signed into law, because consumers will pay for something that's already in the cost of goods. And it's going to 100 percent profit the grocers," she said, according to the AP.
