City of Santa Cruz Bag Ban

The City of Santa Cruz passed an ordinance to regulate single-use bags and encourage a shift to reusable bags. The ordinance bans the distribution of plastic carry out bags and places a 10-cent charge on all paper carry out bags given to customers which is kept by the retailer to offset the costs of implementing the program. All paper bags must contain 40% post-consumer recycled content. Restaurants are exempt, as well as bags used to contain loose items prior to checkout (such as produce bags) and bags to protect items such as meat or wet items.