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Early Addition
Not everyone got an over-hyped "I'm Not A Plastic Bag" when it hit Whole Foods last year, so the powers that be had to step in and put an end to the bag's nemesis: The Plastic Bag!
Yesterday, the City Council passed a bill, 44 to 2, requiring stores over 5,000 square-feet to offer recycling for plastic bags, as well as have bins where bags can be returned. And on the plastic bags stores give to customers, which will contain in large print the following text: "Please return this bag to a participating store for recycling.”
Mayor Bloomberg is expected to approve the bill, which was proposed last October. Other components of the bill include reports from the Department of Sanitation every two years (beginning in 2012) on how successful the program is. Two thousand stores will initially participate, and if they do not comply they are at risk of getting fined ($300 per day).
The two opposing votes were from Republicans Vincent Ignizio and Dennis Gallagher (there were also five absences). City Council Speaker Christine Quinn pointed out that the program won't affect businesses cost-wise because they are able to sell bags to recycling businesses, making around $100 per ton of plastic bags which are later turned into plastic furniture.
What about the global campaign banning plastic bags all together? We suggest you get your own reusable ones, our favorites are Envirosax and MinusBags. Less design-y options are: Baggu, Port & Company's plain canvas bag and ChicoBags.
Photo via OhChiik's Flickr.
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So is it bad if you use the plastic shopping bags for garbage bags?
Or dog poop?
I think that the point is to re-use the bags in one way or another. Too often I see people ask for a plastic bag for something as small as a bottle of soda, walk out of the store and throw the bag in the trash (or worse, on the sidewalk). I think it would be better altogether if stores started charging five or ten cents for every bag. I think a lot more people would start bringing their own bags at that point.
thats why i use fresh direct -- the food gets brought to my door in their gas-guzzling trucks and over-sized cardboard boxes and there is no need for those pesky plastic bags.
I think a lot of people use the plastic shopping bags for garbage bags; apparently it is bad... though I'm not sure how the garbage bags you buy are any better. Maybe those are more biodegradable?
The press conference regarding this great program-- which basically requires a store to have a box to collect voluntarily returned bags-- was funny in a what-do-we-pay-these-people-for kind of way. To hear them describe this, you'd think they just invented the wheel. The idea that this would be a money maker for the businesses affected is laughable. I admit I don't fully appreciate our city and state elected officials; maybe they are doing amazing work and I'm just not aware of it. bleh.
buzz buzzard, I think a 5¢ charge is actually a good idea.
IMO, Nothing works better than an economic incentive.
Stores over 5,000 what? Locations? Shopping carts? Employees?
I bought my reusable bags from Baggu. Not as design-y as Envirosax or Minusbags, but they're cheaper, hold a ton, and are alittle less fem.
http://baggubag.com/index.html
how would a per bag charge be assessed? more often than not, I've paid by the time my groceries have been fully bagged.
while we're at it, lets ban blow-ins and bind-ins...
those annoying "savings coupons" in magazines.
rocknrope: reading comprehension:
*requiring stores over 5,000 square-feet*
I take as many of those bags as I can when I'm shopping. My kid's crappy disposable landfill-clogging diapers get wrapped in them.
Isn't that fascinating? Don't you feel enriched knowing that?
I think a lot of people use the plastic shopping bags for garbage bags;
Yes, that's about the only reason why I go food shopping - otherwise, I would just eat out every night...
@EdEx Those are actually on the way out, it's a really 20C. way of doing promotion so you'll be seeing less and less of those. It's starting already. Very few agencies are buying them like they used to. Personally, I have a hatred so deep for blow-ins because everytime I'm reading a magazine on the subway, about 15 fall out and then I have to chase them around the train like a jerk.
Charging for bags will work well I believe, even if it's only a nickel. When things are free people abuse them because they are free, like the people in restaurants that take about 432 more napkins than they can possibly ever use. I get my groceris on my bike, so I just throw them in my messenger bag and that's that.
I think most New Yorkers reuse the bags one way or another. I know a lot of people use them as garbage bags in their homes. And there are most dog owners that use them to pick up dog poop. New Yorkers are environmentally conscious and I think this is just another money scheme for New Yorkers to have to pay extra to get their bags. I've bought my reusable Trader Joe bag but I always forget to bring it or sometimes I pop by the supermarket on the spur because I'm passing right by it. I won't always carry my re-usable bag otherwise I'd end up a bag lady! But I shouldn't be punished financially either because I do end up reusing the bags.
EdEx, that was changed after my comment. Before it read "stores over 5,000 to offer recycling..." I don't need to go into the re-editing that goes on here, do I?
I'd like to use those totes for food shopping but I'm afraid of looking like a sissy. Can anyone here help me out here?
Designer shopping bags is the only way to go. What happens when you buy more than will fit in one bag? Do you carry two or more bags with you, a bag within a bag? Do you get a discount if you bring your own bag. Will the city lower your taxes if you show that you use your own bag?
So, can I recycle shopping bags at home, with my plastic bottles and stuff?
Personally, I hate the bottle bill for exactly this reason. It is such a ridiculous pain to schlep your bottles to the store, hope that the machine is even working, and wait 10 minutes for the professional bottle scavenger in front of you to finish, when there is perfectly good recycling going on at the curb every week.
Are there "man totes" available?
So city council is spending [our] time on plastic bag abuse... Isn't America great.
midwestguy, check my link above and pick the "Hunter Green" color so you won't feel so wussy picking up your Ronnybrook yogurt and tofu turnovers at the farmer's market.
this is a great idea. best to re-use plastic as much as possible.
re-using them for dog doo is better than just tossing them after 1 use, but the problem is you're putting biodegradable material in a non-degradable bag. we've switched to biodegradable "bio bags" for the dog, and also for our trash!
The best way to reuse plastic bags is to let your young children play with them! They make wonderful and amusing toys. A great favorite of all children is playing 'Spaceman', using a plastic bag as a make believe Flash Gordon style helmet!
I also like the Baggu bags that Rocknrope mentioned. They're pretty plain-looking, and when you're not using them they fold into a little pouch that's maybe 3" x 3" x 0.5".
Man bags:
http://www.ecobags.com/Our_Products/Canvas_Bags
Makes inexpensive sturdy plain vanilla canvas bags simlar to the ones used by boaters. The sea's pretty manley.
I've bought shopping bags from reusablebags.com and they work fine. About the same price as a Baggu and with quite comfortable handles that don't cut into your hands.
I don't think 5 cent bags would make a dent in the problem. I've been to grocery stores that charge 10 cents for each large plastic bag. Low-income shoppers go there to buy their cheap groceries then load them up into six or seven bags. Not a big surprise when you consider that these people are blowing their money and food stamps on overpriced prepackaged foods.
Forced recycling is a great idea. I use some for garbage, but still have a large pile from years past, more than I'll need for trash in the next ten years.
I like how they pretend there's actually a demand for recycled plastic and the city doesn't have to pay people to take their weekly collection of it off their hands.
I've been fighting against plastic bags since they first asked "Paper or plastic" sometime back before 9/11. The problem is that the bags become kites and fly around and encounter the kite eating tree. http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2001/01/treebags.html note: from 2001
I moved out of the city back in 1970 but still visit often. I don't remember the streets ever looking as trashy as they do recently. A few years ago I went to a performance in a church on the upper east side near 90th or so. I was surprised to find myself up to my knees in blowing, swirling trash. Maybe it's cleaner now, I've seen women in Chinatown, picking up litter on a Sunday morning, but I think people have just gotten used to it. I still think it looks like s..t
^^^After a while you get use to the look. Some people call it edgy.
"The best way to reuse plastic bags is to let your young children play with them! They make wonderful and amusing toys. A great favorite of all children is playing 'Spaceman', using a plastic bag as a make believe Flash Gordon style helmet!"
Emilydickenson, I hope you're joking. Kids putting plastic bags over their heads is a fast route to suffocation!
^^^ Someone needs to bring her sarcasm meter into the shop for servicing.
Yeah, gee, I hope she's joking.
I really don't see how a bag surcharge is going to making a difference. Let's face it, people aren't going to balk much about 10 cents being tacked on to their purchase @ the end... on top of all the other overcharges we endure in the city.
Right now Whole Foods refunds .10 per purchase if you tell them you don't need a bag. Even though it's only 10 cents, it' pyschological reinforcent of "saving," on each shopping trip.
But I think the best way to save $ and plastic is to bring a couple of tote bags (recycled or purchased from one of the sites above) to Chinatown for most core purchases.
Thank goddess for Chinatown, my food-supply salvation.
You have to be careful though, because everyone is ridiculously eager to give you a plastic bag for ANYTHING in Chinatown, and may think you're nuts to refuse. They are not the most environmetally aware culture around - duh.
Emily Dickinson, you're hilarious, btw.
Oh man, I'm a dunce. My sarcasm meter is busted!
LONG DAY (and it's only 2).
For X-Mas, the children I'm never having all got 600 packs of Hefty drawstring garbage bags from Sam's club, lead ingots and loaded Star/Tac .380's. It was the best X-mas ever!
The bags should be part of our citywide recycling campaign. They are derived from oil so there must be some way of getting them back there?
I can carry six or more of these bags back from the grocery store comfortably split between two hands. In the old paper days it was one bag which needed both hands.
china agrees: clicky
I worked in a super market upstate (Price Chopper) that would give people .05 cents off their order per bag they brought in to pack their order in (meaning, if they brought in a bunch of plastic bags for the recycle bin, they didn't get anything, but if they checked out and packed their groceries in the same bags, you'd get a credit for each bag used).
They were doing this 10 years ago... ahead of the curve, I guess.
Every time I go to Whole Foods for a box of biscotti, I keep my eyes open for an "I Am Not a Plastic Bag", and I have never seen one! Unless the shoppers are hiding them under all the plastic bags they are carrying!
Charge 25 cents for bags and put the money back into sanitation or recycling or some crap. 25 cents is enough to piss people off but not excessive if u don't have a bag with u. The bags they sell could be made more reusable. There's nothing wrong with plastic bags if you reuse them, and people aren't gonna do that unless you piss them off by charging 25 cents. It works in copenhagen. 5 cents is too little, it needs to be at least 15 cents I think. Also the price of the bag has to be ADDED to your total very noticeably (bag should be rung up like any other item), instead of deducting a savings since that has more psych effect. Otherwise it just feels like some kinda tax, the point of havin that price there and need to ring up a separate item is to piss people off.
Plastic is better than cloth bags because cloth is not water resistant and cloth can stain etc. They arent as durable, but decently thick ones can be re-used.
Also if people are mad about excess plastic bottles not being recycled, add 25cent and 50 cent bottle deposits with easy auto recycling machines for you to get back your deposit easily. Also make the plastic on the bottles thicker so u can re-use them more times. Let bums do more of our recycling for us if someone chooses to throw the bottles out. Monster bottle deposits are the only way ur gonna get serious recycling compliance.