LA County supervisors approved the measure 3-1 on Tuesday in hopes of preventing billions of bags from polluting neighborhoods and waterways. It bans stores from giving customers single-use plastic bags and would require them to charge 10 cents for each paper bag.
The vote was especially meaningful for Assemblywoman Julia Brownley, D-Santa Monica, who tried and failed to pass a statewide ban in August.

Brownley has been an outspoken critic of the use of plastic bags, saying only a very small percentage are recycled and that they take hundreds of years to decompose. “This is just the beginning of a wave of bans against single-use plastic bags across California,” Brownley said.