L.A. plans to make plastic straws available only on request
Plastic straws in lemonade at a street fair in New York on June 7, 2018. Los Angeles is joining the state of California in requiring restaurants to give out plastic straws only by request.
justice committee along with the full council would have to approve it. Councilman Mitch O’farrell sponsored the measure, and he expects it to be in effect at establishments with more than 26 employees by Earth Day on April 22, 2019, and all restaurants by Oct. 1, 2019.
During Tuesday’s session, he displayed a photo of a sea turtle with a plastic straw up its nose – an image that has captured the public imagination on this issue – and said he hoped this bill would change human behavior and that people would begin to stop using these items.
“We can make different choices as a society,” O’farrell said. “The evidence is in, and it’s overwhelming. The after effects – the consequences – of widespread plastic use is choking the planet.”
He said the city’s ban on plastic bags in 2013 has had a huge effect on the cleanliness of the Los Angeles
River, but he noted that plastic straws can still be found in the sandy river bottom.
This measure is seen as yet another victory in a yearslong effort to reduce the amount of plastic in the environment.
San Francisco, Malibu and Manhattan Beach have completely banned the plastic devices. Berkeley, Davis and Oakland have all adopted something similar to Los Angeles – asking that straws be given out only at customers’ request. Companies like Starbucks have also said they will ban the items completely in the near future.
Approximately 165 million tons of plastic litter is in the ocean, according to a city report. This report also said that singleuse plastic straws, which were first developed in the 1960s, were the sixth most collected item on California Coastal Cleanup days between 1988 and 2016.
The City Council also
asked for the Board of Sanitation to study creating an ordinance that would phase out plastic straws completely by 2021. O’farrell said that a two-year phase-out would give restaurants and bars time to get rid of their current inventory of plastic straws.
A complete ban concerns disability advocates, who say that there isn’t a viable alternative for people who must use a straw to drink.
“If restaurants and other establishments stopped having plastic straws available, disabled people wouldn’t be able to do what we can do, which is walk into an establishment and order a drink and enjoy it,” said Autumn Elliott, a senior counsel for Disability Rights California.
“Does it need to be a plastic straw in particular? Not necessarily, but the alternatives currently available don’t usually work for people with disabilities,” Elliott said.