The City Council’s Ordinance Committee continued crafting legislation that would ban single-use plastic bags from grocery stores and other non-restaurant food retailers while imposing a 10-cent fee on paper bags. Santa Barbara’s ordinance is modeled after a similar Los Angeles County law. Public commenters, speaking on Tuesday and representing both environmental and business concerns, wanted the bag ban to apply to as many retailers as possible, the former to mitigate pollution and the latter to maintain competitiveness. City staff will consider how to phase in the ordinance, tweaking language that directs retailers on how to spend the 10-cent fee, and limiting the amount of reusable bags retailers can give away.

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