You’ve got all those tote bags in your apartment, millions of them really, but you always manage to forget them when you go out shopping. So you end up using paper or plastic bags, because hey, what harm can this one time do? Well, soon you might have to pay for your environment-killing ways, because a bill to put a ten cent fee on paper and plastic bags is in front of the City Council, and it has a good amount of support. Bet you’ll remember that PBS tote now.
The bill, which will be introduced tomorrow, according to the Post, would require grocers to add a ten cent fee to any paper or plastic bag people get when they go grocery shopping. The fee would go towards the grocery stores actually, so we’d expect them to be very much on board with the proposal. Importantly, it doesn’t make a distinction between paper or plastic bags, as they both destroy the environment. Which, when you work at a grocery store for four years, you meet a TON of smug people who don’t realize that yes, paper bags also use up precious resources and are made by smog-belching factories.
We wonder which hearings will take longer, the City Council’s or the Park Slope co-op’s? Sensitive to the fact that tote bags usually pile up more in the households of the middle and upper class, the city is also looking in to raising private funds for a giveaway for reusable bags in low-income neighborhoods. Which is something they should do, since the bill not only has the mayor’s and public advocate’s support, but also 19 people in the council already saying they’d support it. Of course, they could also help teach people how to make bags their own bags.
View Comments (2)
When DC did this a few years back, Giant gave away their reusable bags for all groceries in the opening weekend (or so). It probably cost a good bit, but it meant anyone could get a bunch of free bags, and Giant got free advertising.
Everyone whined about it at first but within a few months you adjusted to not needing bags. Particularly for little things at CVS or what not
Ha-ha-ha .... a plastic bottle cap contains more plastic than five plastic bags.
It's both hilarious and sad that a tiny minority of people can force their quasi-relgious views on the rest of the public. Any rational analysis would conclude that a TINY percentage of plastic waste comes from bags. People go to a store with their "reusable" bags and buy WAY more disposable plastic in food packaging than in the bags.
But like all religious zealots they feel the need to jam their silly beliefs down everyone else's throats.