With a good-natured competition among city officials in handing out the most reusable bags, Los Angeles launched a “Bring Your Own Bag” program to kick-start public awareness on the ban on grocery-store plastic bags set to take effect at large grocery and drug stores effective on Jan. 1 and at smaller, more mom-and-pop stores six months later.

“When I got sworn into office, I made sure all the residents of my district could get one of these bags,” said Councilman Felipe Fuentes, holding up a canvas and green bag at a City Hall news conference.

He was quickly joined by Councilman Paul Krekorian, who said he has bags left over from his run for the state Assembly that he would add to the mix.

Councilman Paul Koretz, who authored the new law banning the plastic carryalls, said the city is working in conjunction with Green Vets L.A., Homeboy Industries and other organizations to raise money to produce reusable bags.

“I know the Bureau of Sanitation and the California Grocers Association will be giving out hundreds of thousands of bags,” Koretz said, “but we want everyone to benefit. We will be creating good green jobs for some of the most worthy charities in the city.”

This effort will combat the problem of the Bureau of Sanitation finding enough domestically produced bags, said the agency’s director, Enrique Zaldivar, of the 50,000 Chinese-made bags now being handed out citywide with a budget of $27,500. “We have several efforts to produce bags made in the U.S.,” he said, “but we will have some that are made outside of the United States.”

Bag the Ban, an organization that opposes the change, which requires stores to stop providing plastic and begin charging 10 cents for each paper bag used, said the move will end up costing jobs.

“Approximately 2,000 Californians are employed in the plastic-bag manufacturing and recycling industries,” the group said in a statement. “A bag ban negatively affects employment. Stores inside the (existing) Los Angeles County ban area were forced to terminate staff.”

Bag the Ban has argued that plastic bags are not single use, so they serve a grander purpose.

Krekorian, however, disputed that. “This has been a cultural shift in our city,” he said. “This will be a better city when we are without plastic bags. This city is spending millions of dollars a year cleaning up plastic litter.

“The average life span of use of a plastic bag is, what, 15 minutes or a half-hour for the time it takes for you to get home from a supermarket?”