On April 21, savetheplasticbag.com sued Palo Alto for passing a plastic bag ban in grocery stores throughout the city. The city passed the ban on March 16, but it will not be put into effect until Sept. 18.

Citizens who support the plastic bag industry and grocers argue that the city should recycle the bags instead of banning them.

Stephen Joseph, an attorney representing the Save the Plastic Bag Coalition, argues that the city violated California law when they failed to conduct an Environmental Impact Report before continuing with the ban. “In their zeal to eliminate plastic bags, anti-plastic bag activists and the City and Council have willfully ignored and brushed aside the environmental impacts caused by increasing the use of paper,” the complaint stated.

According to Planet Ark, an international environmental group which supports the plastic bag ban, about 100,000 whales, seals, turtles and other marine animals are killed by plastic bags each year worldwide. “Every time we use a new plastic bag they go and get more petroleum from the Middle East,” executive director of Earth Resource Foundation in Costa Mesa, Calif., Stephanie Barger, said. “We are extracting and destroying the Earth to use a plastic bag for 10 minutes.”

According to Palo Alto Online, the city plans to continue with the ban, but may try to settle the case.