All Los Angeles restaurants would be banned from automatically giving customers plastic straws under an ordinance being considered Friday by the City Council.
A citywide straws-on-request-only ordinance would impact businesses with 26 employees or more by Earth Day on April 22, and all restaurants by Oct. 1.
Councilman Mitch O’Farrell — one of the proposal’s backers — said he wants Los Angeles to go further than a bill, recently signed by then-Gov. Jerry Brown that bans full-service restaurants from automatically giving customers plastic straws, beginning on Jan. 1.
The council in December also directed the Bureau of Sanitation to report back 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 two-year phase-out gives restaurants and bars the time they need to deplete their current inventory of plastic straws, and it gives the industry time to pioneer biodegradable and environmentally friendly alternatives for mass consumption,” O’Farrell said in December.
The motion that led to the straws-on-request ordinance cited a Los Angeles Times editorial which stated that Americans use — and almost immediately discard — up to a half-billion plastic beverage straws each day.