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LOS ANGELES – California became Thursday the first state in the country to ban restaurants from offering plastic straws for drinks, unless customers ask for it.
Governor Jerry Brown said in a signature message that plastics "are choking our planet".
"It's a very small step to ask a customer who wants a plastic straw to ask for it," he said.
The law applies only to full-service restaurants, defined as places where servers take orders and deliver food and beverages.
Ian Calderon, of Whittier, author of the bill, said that consumers now have "the opportunity to make a small deliberate change that will minimize the harmful effects of single-use plastic straws in the environment".
Last year, plastic straws became a key target of ecologists worried about the fact that they clog the oceans and destroy wildlife. According to estimates by Calderon's office, citing the California Coastal Commission, approximately 835,425 straws were collected on the beaches of Golden State between 1988 and 2014.
New York is considering a similar ban and other municipalities, including Seattle and Miami Beach, have already limited the distribution of plastic straw. In July, Starbucks announced that it would eliminate its use of plastic straws by 2020.
Brown noted in his message that global annual plastic production was measured at 448 million tonnes. Much of this water is found in the sea, and the South American non-profit company, Heal the Bay, has been trying to significantly reduce plastic straws for a year.
"Nearly 40% of the waste found in the environment is related to beverages," group spokesman Matthew King said by e-mail. "The single-use plastic does not only destroy California's world-class shores, it kills marine life."
King said Heal the Bay "celebrated this victory today."
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