By Matthew Friedman
The New York City Council is considering a bill that would impose a 10-cent tax on all plastic bags used by customers at grocery stores and other shops around the city. The bill was introduced early in 2014 by City Councilman Brad Lander from Brooklyn and has been sponsored by many, including Helen Rosenthal, who represents the Upper West Side.
The goal of the bill is to reduce the consumption of carryout bags through what is referred to as “a fee of not less than ten cents for each carryout bag provided to any person.” The tax would be collected by the store, but instead of going to the government as with a normal sales tax, the individual establishments would get to keep the money.
Linda, a manager at Lenny’s, a bagel shop at 98th Street and Broadway, said: “It’s a good idea. If people want coffee, they put in a paper bag inside a plastic bag inside a paper bag. It’s ridiculous. [Through the bill] we probably will get some money, and people will bring their own bags.” Nima, an employee at The Health Nuts, a health food store on Broadway between 98th and 99th street, thought that the bill could be modestly successful: “Always a good idea, but I don’t think it would make that much [money]”.
Some stores have already made a change over to from single-use plastic bags to recyclable paper ones. Trader Joe’s at 72nd Street and Broadway has been using thick brown bags for years alongside the usual plastic ones. Westside Market also uses a combination of paper and plastic bags. Most small businesses, however, still find it cheaper to use the customary plastic bag. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, which tracks the actions of state governments across the country, New York state passed a law in 2008 which required stores to have signs asking customers to return plastic bags for recycling. They must also provide a location for these bags to be recycled.
California was the first state to put in place a ban which hopefully aid in limiting plastic bag waste and help the environment. The bill, which will go into effect on July 1st, prevents large stores from distributing single-use plastic bags and by 2016 will begin to limit a wider variety of stores, including convenience stores.
The problem of bagging items from stores is not just an American one. The European Union spent the fall dealing with its own legislation regarding the ban on lightweight plastic bags. An article in The Guardian published in November put the number of bags used per year per person in Europe at 191, while according to the European Commission, the lawmaking body of the EU, that number is 198. Either way, environmentalists and politicians alike agree that this number needs to be reduced. EU Environment Commissioner Janez Potočnik was quoted on their website:
We’re taking action to solve a very serious and highly visible environmental problem.
Every year, more than 8 billion plastic bags end up as litter in Europe, causing enormous environmental damage. Some Member States have already achieved great results in terms of reducing their use of plastic bags. If others followed suit we could reduce today’s overall consumption in the European Union by as much as 80%.
The Guardian article refers to a proposal ratified in November where “Measures such as bag taxes could be considered as equivalent” can be easily put in place by EU member states.
We spoke with several Upper West Siders who supported measures to reduce the use of plastic bags, although they had differing opinions about how to do that and where the tax proceeds should be spent.
“I think that’s a good idea. More people get bags from us than bring their own, and we only have plastic,” said John, a stockperson at West Side Stationers on 99th street and Broadway. At the same store, Cisco, a cashier said: “We need to get better plastic bags that people can reuse.”
One woman, Elizabeth, seemed to be a bit hesitant about the idea: “Do I think it will be helpful, maybe, but I already have a reusable bag.”
A market is developing, mostly online, for low cost bags made from materials that are less harmful to the environment. Upper West Sider Scott, shopping in a Duane Reade at 102nd Street and Broadway, thought that the money generated by the tax should not necessarily be going into the pocket of businesses: “The bill is probably a good idea. If it were invested in better paper bags, though, that would be a very good thing. The ones down at Trader Joe’s break so easily. Someone needs to build a better paper bag.”
Helen Rosenthal’s office did not respond to requests for an interview about why she’s supporting the bill.
Opponents of the bill argue that the tax will put too much of a burden on lower-income families and that New Yorkers don’t hold the issue very highly. Novolex, a major producer of plastic products, has launched a site called bagtheban.com, which asserts that: “A bag tax increases costs of daily necessities and disproportionally burdens those who can least afford it. Residents of Park Slope may be able to afford a bag tax, but those who live in some of the neediest communities will have trouble making ends meet.” The website also claims that roughly 82% of New Yorkers reuse their bags.
The bill is with the Committee on Sanitation and Solid Waste Management in the City Council and there is not yet a date for a vote. You can follow its progress here.
No mention of Zabars which gives the customer a 10 cent
reduction for not taking a plastic bag, and no mention of
Fairway which automatically doubles the plastic bags with
each purchase…you have to tell them that you want a single
bag. One of the problems in NYC is that most people shop
on the way home from work and do not want to carry a bag
with them for the whole day.
Whole Foods also offers a 10 cent per bag refund for paper/plastic bags not used. They’ve also been doing this for many years; I believe it is a chain-wide policy (not just in New York)
Net bags and foldable bags that fit inside an adult’s fist are available for purchase. Just a matter of slightly changing one’s habits and voila! …. no more bags flapping and rattling in treetops for months (years?) on end. It’s all so simple.
An example of the type of bag UWS Wally is referring to:
https://www.ecobags.com/chicoBag?sc=2&category=7134
Something like this could fit into many women’s handbags.
As a guy who dresses like a guy, I don’t feel like there’s anywhere on my person that I could easily stash an adult fist.
Did you mean to be this funny? thank for the LOL!
Agreed! I always have one or two in my backpack/book bag. Easy to do!
The claim that it’s a burden on lower income families is ludicrous! The point of the tax is that they should STOP using disposable plastic bags, not that they should pay the tax and continue using them.
The average life of a plastic bag is 3,000 years. Its useful life? 10 minutes.
So if you don’t use plastic bags, what do you put your garbage in? Any plastic bag takes a while to decompose.
And if you don’t use garbage bags, the vermin must love your building!
I’m on a fixed income and rely on those plastic grocery bags so that I can bag up and hang up my garbage each night so the mice stay out of my kitchen.
I also walk to 2 or more stores each day, shopping sales to save on groceries so that I can afford to eat and use those bags for garbage later.
I’m not one of those 1% who can afford to pay an extra 10 cents for each bag.
No mention of Whole Foods either and their 10 cent reduction for bringing your own bag.
I am so tired of hearing those bags flapping in the wind because they are stuck in trees.
I have been using my own bags for many years. I don’t understand why the poor can’t also. I think it is more laziness and not caring for the environment that has both rich and poor using plastic instead of their own reusable bags.
It boggles the mind, the folly of liberals, proudly ignorant of the devastating negative health effects on their own aging neighborhood, of losing sanitary plastic bags that contain a trivial mass of recyclable plastic. San Francisco food poisoning skyrocketed!
https://foodpoisoningbulletin.com/2013/e-coli-infections-spike-after-plastic-bag-ban-in-california/
-=NikFromNYC=-, Ph.D. in chemistry (Columbia/ Harvard)
Plastic bags cannot be recycled. They will never biodegrade. No one used them until the 1970s. It’s time to end their use. I recommend switching to Envirosax. they can be purchased through Amazon in packs of five.
Thank goodness for the express train that means us normal non-neurotic, non-Gaian fossil hippie cult members can get downtown so easily for our actual normal mature adult social lives. Plastic bags are merely symbolic sacrifices to their pagan Earth goddess, now that they have a budding climate doomsday prophesy to cling to. Failing actual heat waves though, they grasp for any type of activism they can think of, food poisoning be damned. But maybe that’s actual their goal, eh? After all, in the Internet era, ignorance of the sanitary dangers of reusing bags year after year is nothing but wilfull.
That’s great. We will tax plastic bags but not billionaire condos in the sky! Sorry to be so cynical but shoppers don’t have a voice but developers and Fresh Direct do.
The bags are no doubt convenient, and re-use them as garbage bags.
That said, they are not biodegradable and we should seek an alternative. I think it should be done on the Federal level (or at least state) – perhaps a phasing out over a few years time.
The last thing New York City needs needs is more red tape and additional burden on businesses. Not every answer is yet another tax.
and Pedestrian – please refrain for the tired attacks on billionaires and developers. enough already , and its off stoic here. the City council and mayor we have are all about ‘your” voice with little regard or outright hostility to landlords (who pay the majority of the taxes around here) and the wealthy among us.
yes, it’s well known that the wealthy and ral estate interests have been disenfranchised in NYC. they should be out demonstrating! a Million Millionaires March.
No mention that garbage has o be placed in a plastic bag before placing it in the garbage bins. Without plastic bags from shops we’ll have to buy plastic bags.
Reusable grocery bags are disgusting – just one of many articles on the subject
https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2010/06/reusable-shopping-bags-and-food-safety/#.VMEGgUfF98E
I love my plastic bags. Easy to carry and double as trash bags for the compactor.
Egad! Thanks for sharing. Sending all mine to the laundry tomorrow.
“The tax would be collected by the store, but instead of going to the government as with a normal sales tax, the individual establishments would get to keep the money”
So its more of another revenue-generating scam like the airlines are doing by charging you to do… well.. anything!
Won’t people then just have to buy plastic garbage bags to dispose of their home garbage each day? Won’t have intended effect of reducing plastic bags. Or how else to dispose of consumer trash?
I need the bags for my dogs. Everyone in my building does, and the people without dogs give them to their neighbors.
Why doesn’t everyone recycle them by using them to put their garbage in. Much better than paying for new kitchen garbage bags.
Agree. We recycle EVERY plastic grocery bag we have as a garbage bag.
Thanks to this misguided bill, our grocery bills will go up by 50 cents or more for each trip as stores routinely double bag plastic bags to hold heavy items.
Maybe Helen can afford to pay more for the basics here, but the rest of us old-time west siders cannot.
We vote and will remember her picking our pocketbooks every time we shop and certainly come the next election.
If your situation is that dire may I suggest moving yo s city where groceries on the whole are much less expensive? If you can afford 5 bags of groceries in Manhattan you won’t flinch at .50 lol
Obviously you pay a lot more for groceries than most real UWSiders.
We have to resort to buying only ‘sale’ items to get by, which requires making trips to several stores each week in order to get the best prices on necessary items.
The 50 cents to $1.00 a week adds up for me. So glad that YOU can afford to pay extra for things. Not everyone on the UWS is rich. Many of us are just getting by and watching every penny.
I’m in favor of this. Yes, I’ll probably pay the $0.10 most of the time, but it’ll make me more likely to try and remember to reused a bag. It doesn’t even have to be a canvas bag, but just one I previously got from the store.
Economic incentives to nudge people’s behavior is the best way to go about this. People should still be able to choose plastic bags; an outright ban would be really annoying. But people should also bear some cost for their choices.
Just what we need-more government rules. NYC is barely workable as is. What if you serendipitously find an item you need and di not bring your ne bag? or not enough bags? Some will be irritated and not make the purchase . Besides, if I don’t get plastic bags with my purchases, which I use o pick up after my dog and as garbage pail lines, I will have to buy plastic bags to use for these purposes. I think it would be smarter to ban sales of huge garbage bags and encourage people to recycle the plastic bags we get with our purchases. What about bags used for wrapping food to store refrigerate items or sandwich bags? Shouldn’t we ban those also? Just like our local politicians to get behind any idea for publicity without thinking it through.
Look at the recycling laws. Impossible to follow unless one has a car. I would guess that the majority of Manhattan residents
do not have this luxury, Or one cold be 6′, 240 lbs., and deliver it by Subway. Ha!. .
Re: “Or one cold be 6′, 240 lbs., and deliver it by Subway.”
HUH ???????????????????
Allowing the store to keep the 10 cents makes it a surcharge not a tax.
No. It’s a tax that affects those at the middle and low income range. We don’t have a lot of options, as we often go food shopping on our way from somewhere else (work, school) and don’t carry a spare carry all with us. Also, I do take bags back to a local Duane Reade and Gristede’s that have re-cycle receptacles for used bags. Plus I use the bags for garbage and to carry umbrella. I think a 10 cent tax is a lot, also considering that some of us with small areas for storage go to the grocery several times a week. Again, it’s the lower income people who will bear the brunt.
Does the money go to city government? No – then it’s not a tax, it’s a surcharge.
We use the plastic shopping bags as garbage bags. We found a bin that is the perfect size. If we didn’t have these we’d have to buy plastic bags. Where’s the environmental advantage then? Require bags be biodegradable and the tax would make a little more sense. Don’t let the merchant keep the tax, it should go to support the Dept. Of Sanitation to help develop modern methods of recycling.
I’m for the (avoidable) 10c charge to the customer, and the incentive to the retailer. The problem also needs to be tackled at many other points. Example: Will a psychologist please propose an effective script for getting the clerk to actually give you your purchase without a plastic bag. “No bag, please” usually does not abort this understandably automatic process. Clerks need to avoid time-consuming negotiating with each customer.
If $0.10/bag is such a burden to you, maybe you shouldn’t be living in the most expensive city in the country. And if it’s not a huge burden to you but you have use of the bags, guess what? You’ll still be able to get them! You’ll just pay $0.10.
“Opponents of the bill argue that the tax will put too much of a burden on lower-income families…”
Is there a reason lower-income families can’t use reusable bags? Perhaps the city can distribute them to lower-income families for free? I always carry a reusable bag in my purse and use it for my groceries. No reason why a lower-income person can’t do that as well.
i am in total favor on a tax on plastic bags so that people will finally stop overusing them. I would ban them completly if possible. there is tons of plastic in our oceans and your plastic bags ends up in the stomach of fish and other animals.
i have been using a resuable bag for years – i WASH it regualarly in the wahsing machine,
and off my dog i use recyled bags (they are made with corn i think)
we are damagin our planet with too much plastic – and we can stop – i am European and gres up with a more environmental-protective mentality than most New Yorkers.
but you can learn!
But what will we do with our garbage? Will we have to buy plastic garbage bags? the plastic industry must like that very much.
I spend about a quarter of my time in Los Angeles where most plastic bags have been banned for a year and paper bags cost $.10 in the grocery stores. Prepared food vendors are allowed to use recyclable plastic bags and those are still provided at such establishments for free.
My question is what makes a plastic bag recyclable? And if they can be made as such why aren’t all plastic bags made that way?
In LA it’s easy to carry my own cloth bags in the car if I decide to drop in at a grocery store. In New York I don’t walk around constantly carrying a bag with me and so I would essentially be “taxed” $.10 each time I shop.
I must say I appreciate the convenience of not worrying about cloth/plastic/$.10 charges when I return to New York from LA. And whichever bag I’m given (plastic at Fairway; paper at Trade Joe’s) I use for my garbage can at home. Instant recycling.
Mr. Friedman, thank you for your very well written, informative article about New Yorkers’ responses to the proposed plastic bag tax. A greener New York can only be good. I wish there was an incentive option on the Bill so that shoppers could get a 10 cent refund for bringing in their own bags. It would offer a level playing field to retailers and consumers….just a wish. Thanks for putting this issue out there. Hope to learn more from you in future articles.
So sort of like the deposit on soda cans and bottles? Now THAT’S an interesting idea! Not sure how to implement it though…;
Ridiculous to charge same fee/tax/surcharge on all plastic bags since all are not created equal. I always reuse bags … that have not already broken . . . but some barely make it home.
I use them for recyclables and as garbage bags. If I don’t have them then I will have to buy plastic garbage bags which are thicker and probably less environmentally friendly.
For those concerned that this unfairly impacts the poor, consider that even Myanmar, one of the poorest least developed places on earth, has launched a campaign to deal with plastic bag trash. NYC won’t be the first city to place a fee on bags, and we aren’t the first country to do this. In Dublin, the fee is over 50 cents (1/2 Euro) per bag, and nobody cares because nobody uses them any more. And the trash along the roads and countryside has disappeared.
Just pay people $.10 per returned bag.
I don’t understand the hoopla over this. It’s much easier to carry a lot of groceries in a paper bag with plastic around it with handles. They also make great bags to put my garbage in – they fit my garbage bin perfectly. I use all those plastic bags, and I recycle them. I also reuse and recycle the paper bags. If every building and every corner had proper recycling bins, it wouldn’t be a problem to recycle the bags. Every store that uses plastic bags is supposed to have a recycling bin available for people to deposit plastic bags. Sounds like people are lazy and don’t want to do the work associated with recycling.
ANother regressive tax that hits the poor- and middle-class consumers. No thanks.
I think the real travesty here is that the industry lobbyists have persuaded Helen Rosenthal and the other supporters to grant this money to the storeowner. What possible public good would be done by sending millions of NYC dollars in aggregate to the CVS headquarters in Rhode Island, rather than investing it in our parks or solid waste system.
If this is going to be a tax, it should be a legit tax that returns benefit to New Yorkers. A bit disturbing that our progressive legislators sold us out so easily.
great idea. will make my shoplifting so much easier
“Helen Rosenthal’s office did not respond to requests for an interview about why she’s supporting the bill.”
Shocker. Helen Rosenthal’s office doesn’t respond to any request for anything . . . unless you have some clout.
Sorry to be a little off-topic here, but since August I have been hounding her office for information regarding the purely aesthetic spraying of pesticides in Riverside Park by the NYC Department of Parks. I went into her Columbus Ave. office twice during the summer and was told both times that someone would get back to me soon. Four months later I went back a third time and actually got a call from someone later that day. She gave me a little information (enough to appease silly me) and said she would be sending me a letter (she took my address) within a few days. Three months later and I am still waiting.
Conversely, the owner of my building, who is widely known and respected on the Upper West Side, made a morning call to Rosenthal’s office about a minor problem on the street outside my building. The issue was resolved within hours.
Has anyone else been frustrated by Rosenthal’s office? Maybe some of the plastic bags that litter the Upper West Side have jammed its communication infrastructure?
As for the plastic bags, I agree with one commenter that education of store clerks is very important. Why does every purchase (even one apple, one bag of rice and one loaf of bread) require half the natural resources of Russia to make the five-minute walk home possible? That being said, a former manager of Fairway told me–when I asked about the store’s excessive bagging–that he had a difficult time getting the checkout clerks to just smile and say “hello,” let alone figure out how to bag appropriately.
there has been a streetlight out on w 89st btw col & amst since LATE Oct…I have made 2 complaints to 311 and light is STILL out…made one call to Rosenthals office in late Dec and WALLA….LIGHT IS STILL OUT..
I bet you’re fun at parties…:)
This statistic is ludicrous. If 82% of plastic bags were reused, why are there so many plastic bags accumulating on the street, in the garbage and even in the trees. And billions in the ocean. If anyone is concerned about low income people being burdened by oaying for plastic bags, our neighbors concerned with the cost could save and reuse the bags or carry synthetic bags with them when they go to the store. . A tiny fraction of the public comes to the store with a reusable bag. I bring my own bags whenever I go out but somehow the plastic ones appear out of nowhere and multiply in the dark under my sink.
If plastic bags are so harmful to human civilization why not just ban them outright? Why add more complexity to the tax code to discourage their use?
Are you kidding me? It’s not already expensive enough to live up here, we have to be surcharged to carry our groceries as well?
And … We’ve known how environmentally unsound plastic bags are for YEARS … Why don’t the stores just get rid of them???
Yes, there has to be a better way, but if the city would actually fine those who don’t clean up after their dogs, they would make a fortune. The city streets may have dirty plastic bags floating around, but dog waste is worse. Ever come home after walking the streets and finding it on your shoes? At least you don’t bring home dirty plastic bags.
It is about time. We were in CA for a month and within a short time got very used to the idea that we needed to bring our own bags. New Yorkers usually have backpacks or tote bags with them anyway, so they can just store an extra bag or two for spur of the moment shopping. I do not think it will put a burden on anyone!