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Daly City Councilman To Propose Plastic Bag Ban

DALY CITY (KCBS) - Daly City could become the latest Bay Area community to ban plastic bags at large stores if a city councilman's proposal is approved. 

Supporters of plastic bags, meanwhile, said they would file suit unless there's a full study on the potential impacts of such a ban.

KCBS' Chris Filippi Reports:

Daly City councilman David Canepa's proposal would ban plastic bags at stores that are larger than 10,000 sq. ft.  He planned to introduce his bag ban proposal on Feb. 14.

Canepa has indicated he is also considering a 10-cent fee for paper bags. He was thinking about asking other Peninsula cities to share the cost of an environmental impact report on plastic bags for the region.

Canepa suggested it wasn't uncommon to see plastic bags littering streets and in storm water drains.

"Taxpayers should not be responsible for paying for the cleanup of plastic bags, nor should the environment suffer," he declared. "Those plastic bags which people use, they get caught in our storm water drains and then filter out into the Pacific Ocean."

Save the Plastic Bag Coalition attorney Stephen Joseph countered that Daly City needed to do an environmental impact report before any potential ban. He pointed to San Francisco, which didn't do a study and is now paying the price.

"No fee was put on paper bags because there had been no study of the issue. And now San Francisco has become the paper bag capitol of America, which is terrible for the environment," he countered. "So the question is, are paper bags better for the environment than the plastic bags or are they worse for the environment? And the answer is they're worse for the environment."

(© 2011 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)

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