Nearly Nine Million Mexico City Residents To Soon Enjoy S.F.-Style Plastic Bag Ban

El Hombre Plástico is no longer welcome in Mexico City either

​Finally, a city that will follow our bone-headed, pseudo-environmentalist lead.

For the two years since San Francisco passed an ordinance limiting the use of plastic grocery bags, residents of this trend-setting city have waited for other green-minded urban centers to followed suit. This week San Francisco's policy has moved from the category of singular experiment to hemispheric trend as Mexico City barred grocery stores serving its 8.8 million residents from handing out non-biodegradable plastic shopping bags, the Los Angeles Times reports.

The move is the latest in a series of environmental-minded measures in the extraordinarily polluted and sprawling Mexican capital. In December, the city plans to launch a bike-lending scheme similar to one under contemplation in San Francisco. The city has also replaced hundreds off downtown pesero mini buses with more fuel efficient ones evocative of San Francisco's fleet of biodeisel public transit vehicles.

As in San Francisco, however, Mexico City's green initiatives may be less earth-friendly than meets the eye. As reported earlier this year by Joe Eskenazi, San Francisco's plastic bag ban may actually harm the environment by encouraging use of wood-pulp paper bags.

San Francisco's biodiesel investment may have also been an earth-last move because it ate up valuable transit dollars -- worsening service, and discouraging people from choosing to ride the bus instead of take a car, as SF Weekly reported.

Mexico City's green-bus initiative reduces by about half the number of transit vehicles on the downtown Paseo de la Reforma -- similarly making transit all that less efficient.