[How our toothbrushes are littering paradise.]

Plastic items spilling out of the carcasses of dead sea creatures or piled in landfills have inspired bans across the country, but the undertaking has mostly taken place in a patchwork of city and county governments. The city council of Orlando, Fla., on Monday approved a partial ban on straws and bags, and last month, Cuyahoga County, Ohio, banned plastic bags starting from next year.

In March, lawmakers in New York agreed on a statewide ban on most types of single-use plastic bags from retail sales, making it the second state to do so after California, which has been at the national forefront of legislative action to ban plastics clogging shorelines.

Santa Cruz County just south of San Francisco was the first in the state to pass a plastic straw ban in 2016.

In 2016, the world generated 242 million tons of plastic waste, according to the World Bank. North America, which it defines as Bermuda, Canada and the United States, is the third largest producer of plastic waste, totaling more than 35 million tons.

The transformation in the hospitality industry will be both cultural and economic. Industry observers were concerned about how the changes in the pending bill would affect the work of housekeeping staff, or that guests would recoil from using refillable bottles that had been accessible to previous guests and just topped up, rather than completely replaced.

The California bill says that from the start of 2023, lodging establishments with more than 50 rooms would be prohibited from providing a small plastic bottle containing a personal care product in a bathroom or sleeping room. Establishments with 50 rooms or fewer would have until Jan. 1, 2024.

The California Hotel & Lodging Association had pushed for an extension of the deadline to make it easier for hotels to comply. But it said some of its members already had environmental programs in place.