San Franciscans may be paying 10-cents for shopping bags in the city starting October 1. A San Francisco Superior Court Judge upheld a city ordinance extending the ban on non-compostable bags to all retailers and restaurants, and imposing a 10-cent charge on each single-use paper or compostable bag.
The Save the Plastic Bag Coalition sued the city in March saying the Board of Supervisors violated the California Environmental Quality Control Act by not submitting the ban to an environmental review. In July, the California Supreme Court ruled against the coalition who claimed that the Southern California city of Manhattan Beach violated environmental review laws with a plastic bag ban.
In the past the coalition had also sued Marin County, San Luis Obispo, Santa Cruz, Long Beach, Palo Alto and Oakland.
In 2007, San Francisco became the first city in the country to ban plastic bags from major grocery stores and pharmacies. Currently, 41 California cities and counties ban plastic bags, according to the advocacy group Californians Against Waste.
Read the City Attorney's Press Release.