Plastic shopping bags may be going the way of lead paint and other banned products

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'Plastic shopping bags, a staple of the U.S. retail experience for a half-century, may be going the way of lead paint and other banned products.
Los Angeles, the second most-populous U.S. city, yesterday became the largest American metropolis to curb use of the ubiquitous bags out of concern that they clog waterways, kill marine life and litter public places. An alderman in Chicago has introduced a similar measure, and a councilman in New York said he plans to follow suit...Officials in all three cities say their goal is a coast-to-coast ban on the bags'

Flashback: Are we drowning in reusable grocery bags? ‘A cotton bag has to be used 131 times to equal environmental impact of producing one plastic bag’ -- 'Are shoppers using the bags enough to make them worthwhile? The UK Environment Agency recently concluded that a cotton bag has to be used 131 times to equal the environmental impact of producing one plastic bag' 

Reverse the Bag Ban — ‘Plastic Bags are Green, Safe, Biodegradable and Economical’ 

In Defense of Plastic Bags: ‘Study after study has shown that most of the supposed ‘benefits’ of these plastic bag bans and taxes have a negligible effect on the environment at best’ 

Reusable ‘eco-friendly’ bags may be less ‘green’ than plastic bags: ‘Cotton bags may cause more global warming, as a greater amount of energy goes into making a cloth carrier than a polythene one’ 

Back to plastic? Reusable ‘eco-friendly’ grocery bags may cause food poisoning -- 'Swab-testing finds unacceptably high levels of bacterial, yeast, mold and coliform'