By Lena Babaeva Coradini

Some states and cities out West have considered a ban on plastic bags, but it appears that it has not gained much traction.  Just this week: California rejected the ban on plastic shopping bags  when the bill for the ban failed 14-21 on Tuesday, after a lot of spending by the plastic bag manufacturing industry that argued that the bill would kill jobs.  However, many doubt that this issue will go away:

Environmental groups have long lobbied for statewide bans, but only local ones have passed. The California cities of San Francisco, Malibu, Palo Alto and Fairfax have approved bans, and North Carolina banned single-use plastic and non-recyclable bags last year in the Outer Banks. In January, Washington, D.C., began requiring grocery stores to charge a nickel for disposable grocery bags, according to USA Today.

The proposed ban had gone further than in any other state, in part because of support from the California Grocers Association, an industry group that previously opposed the bill.

“The bill has been amended tremendously,” said the group’s CEO Ronald Fong, adding its revised version pre-empted local jurisdictions from passing their own bag bans. Without a statewide ban, he said stores will face a potential patchwork of dozens of varying local ordinances that could cause “chaos and customer confusion.”

“This issue is not going away,” Fong told USA Today. “The future is in reusable bags. It’s the right thing to do.”

To garner more support, Brownley also removed a provision that would have charged customers a nickel to buy a recycled paper bag. The revised version allows retailers to charge only what it costs them to buy the bags.