Consumerist mecca New York targets its throwaway culture this weekend with a ban on single-use plastic bags that has been years in the making and is still rare in the US.
New Yorkers like to see themselves at the forefront of efforts to save the environment, but are used to receiving groceries in free plastic bags, often doubled up to ensure sturdiness.
That is to change today, when New York becomes the third US state to ban the non-biodegradable sacks blamed for choking rivers, littering neighborhoods and suffocating wildlife.
Photo: AFP
Environmental advocates welcomed the new law, but cautioned that exemptions would weaken its effect, while some small businesses are worried that the ban might negatively effect their profits.
At the Westside Market in Manhattan, 66-year-old Janice Vrana, who said that she has been shopping with a reusable cloth bag for a decade, is delighted that “pervasive” plastic sacks are being banished.
“You could drive over them 500 times with a Mack Truck and they probably wouldn’t break down. Whatever little I can do, I do,” she told reporters.
Janine Franciosa, a 38-year-old who works in advertising, said it is great that people are becoming more aware of how their “everyday purchases are affecting the environment.”
However, not everyone was happy.
Westside Market manager Ian Joskowitz, 52, told reporters that some customers were “upset,” because they use free plastic bags as garbage bags.
New York uses about 23 billion plastic bags every year, according to the state government.
About 85 percent are thrown away, ending up in landfills, and on streets and beaches, it said.
After several failed attempts, lawmakers finally approved the ban in April last year.
It bars all retailers who pay state taxes — such as department stores, supermarkets, neighborhood corner stores and gas stations — from providing plastic bags to customers.
Violators can expect fines of up to US$500, although officials have said they would give stores time to adapt to the new rules.
The ban would “protect our natural resources for future generations,” New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said when he announced the legislation last year.
The law allows New York city and counties to levy a US$0.05 tax on paper bags, with part of the resulting revenue going to an environmental protection fund.
Kate Kurera, deputy director of Environmental Advocates of New York, has said hat the ban will cause “a tremendous reduction” in plastic waste pollution.
However, she lamented that food takeouts, beloved by New York City’s 8.6 million inhabitants, are exempt.
Other exemptions include bags for prescription drugs, plastic wrapping for newspapers delivered to subscribers and bags used solely for non-prepackaged food, such as meat and fish.
Kurera hoped the government would make the paper bag fee mandatory to force customers to bring their own carriers, saying that producing paper bags is intensive in terms of oil, fossil fuels and trees used.
“Ideally neither bag is preferable,” she told reporters. “Behavior is slower to change when people know they can get a free paper bag.”
Greg Biryla, New York state director at the National Federation of Independent Business, said that alternatives can cost up to seven times more than plastic bags.
“They are proportionally more burdensome on small businesses who aren’t ordering in as big a quantity as their big business counterparts,” he told reporters.
California and Oregon have statewide bans of plastic bags, while Hawaii has a de facto ban.
Four other states have bans starting soon, while Texas has prevented its cities from outlawing plastic bags.
New York’s older residents said that plastic bags only became available in US grocery stores in 1979, signaling how quickly habits can change.
“When I was growing up we brought our own bags,” shopper Denise Shaleaon told reporters, adding of the ban: “The New Yorker will have to live with it.”
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