Berkeley has tightened its grip on the use of plastic bags with the City Council’s recent passage of an ordinance to close loopholes in state and county laws that are allowing millions of bags into landfills and the greater environment.

State and county laws ban flimsy plastic film carryout bags from a variety of stores while allowing thicker plastic bags. The Berkeley council, at its Nov. 15 meeting, banned the thicker plastic bags that are provided by supermarkets with less than $2 million in sales and among other places, convenience food and smaller retail stores not already regulated by the state. The new law goes into effect Jan. 1.

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Keith Burbank is currently a fulltime reporter covering Alameda County and Oakland news for Bay City News. He has also worked on the Data Points project for Local News Matters, finding trends and stories about the region through data. In 2019, he was a California Fellow at the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism, producing a series about homeless deaths in Santa Clara County. He worked as a swing shift editor for the newswire for several years as well. Outside of journalism, Keith enjoys computer programming, math, economics and music.