Fox-
Every year, billions of disposable bags are used in New York City. In an effort to curb their use, the City Council is expected to approve a bill Thursday that would require retailers to charge customers 5 cents per plastic or paper bag.
Supporters of the bill say most people think that plastic bags are recyclable but they’re not. They don’t decompose, only break into pieces and account for 100,000 tons of solid waste every year.
The bag fee excludes restaurants, wine shops, prescription medications and those who use food stamps. If it passes, the bag fee will go into effect on October 1.
Looky here. Who is excluded?
Liquor stores, Mickey Dees and EBT card users.
Listen, either the bags are bad for the environment or they’re not.
The bags used by parasites and drunks don’t magically un-harm the environment.
HT/ GreetingsFromYonkers
They can charge all they want, rest assured, they will never have to worry about me breaking their ignorant gun laws, Sharpton/de Blasio pogroms, bag tax, soda brown shirts, salt Shakers, union goons, lawless subways, oppressive property tax, etc.
You have to be stuck there to put up with it, self flagellate yourselves folks, the rest of us will watch.
Seems very unfair for a socialist state to charge people .5 cents to buy the means to commit suicide!
youtube George Carlin on Global warming.
His take on plastic bags
@Handle, I know NYC seems like a foreign country but I don’t think they have the ha’penny.
Are they going to treat plastic bags like returnable soda bottles?
“You didn’t get that here!”
Considering the way some stores bag grocery items, this could run into quite the chunk of change.
And if the bags are not recyclable, what are all these recycle barrels in the stores for?
I heard they also charge for breathing.
Only if you exhale.
They did this in Dallas two years ago.
I never paid a nickel. I live close to the city line and the grocery store on the other side of it has lower prices anyway. Was not hard to stop buying groceries in Dallas.
It was so unpopular that it was killed on it’s one year anniversary.
Typical Democrat idea. Let’s write something down and force the public to do something – everything will be alright after that because IT’S WRITTEN DOWN. LOOK AT IT! YOU HAVE TO OBEY IT NOW! WHAT OTHER CHOICE COULD YOU POSSIBLY HAVE? Completely ignoring the human-nature aspect of the equation. What could go wrong?
The increase in fees will never be used to offset the “tons of waste from plastic bags” anyway. They’ll piss it away someplace else – like politician payoffs – and they’ll STILL have the same problem.
We went all wrong on garbage. Incinerate the dang stuff. Scrap steel is melted down (and maybe Jimmy Hoffa also) and with current technology, all that really goes into the sky is steam. WTF, land fills that are only used for golf courses and snow play hills – at least in our area.
Problem I have with “organic” grown mass produced produce, it’s fertilized with human sewage from large cities. No one has yet convinced me that all pharmaceuticals and other questionable ingredients from this waste have been eliminated. Valium tomatoes anyone? Paint thinner, paint residue oranges anyone? How about spinach and salad enriched with viagra, b.c. pills, or maybe lithium?
Dang, we recycle plastics, make polar fleece from it, we wash it and the particles go into the lakes via the wash water. Look at the problems with face scrub junk cosmetic fixes going into the water supply. Someone should think baking soda instead. Plastic bags? Hey whatever happened to the good old fashioned cellophane bags. Paper-renewable, really eco safe, but then the damn spotted owl will have to move out of HIS forest.
There is zero common sense about garbage.
Back in the day when “Paper or Plastic?” was the question in every checkout line, I always opted for paper bags, and was even willing to pay extra for them. I pointed out that paper bags were a reusable, recyclable, renewable, environmentally friendly, AMERICAN MADE resource while plastic bags were made from expensive petrochemicals we purchase from wealthy Middle Eastern Oil Barons so we can turn them into permanent garbage for land fills.
Eventually they stopped asking, and just foisted plastic bags on all of us anyway, creating the environmental disaster they now blame on people like me who never wanted them in the first place.
I realize that nobody gives a rat’s ass what I think, even when I’m right, but I think I deserve the right to smack these people upside the head when they complain to me about it.
I take my own cloth bags to the store, or pull empty cardboard boxes from the store shelves to pack my groceries in now.
I have groceries delivered to the house and you better believe they come in wads of those plastic bags….useless to me. Oh I guess I put the clinkers from the cat box in them…that’s one thing they are good for.
Open the Door
That’s all the 5 cent piece is now worth in buying power. It will get you a plastic bag!
235 bags per person, per year?
Almost 1000 bags per family of 4?
They don’t pack things very efficiently in NYC, do they?
Just looking for another revenue stream ($100 Million/yr) – won’t do shit to curb usage.
izlamo delenda est …
I buy 10,000 plastic for less than 3 cents a bag
Wasn’t it these idiots who got us started using plastic bags instead of paper – because it was better for the environment and forests, or some such nonsense…once again political correctness come full circle…
Fur, thanks for running with this article I forwarded to you. The New York City Council just can’t seem to do enough to stick it to working people, can they?
My own personal way of coping with this will be not to buy one effing thing in New York City unless a) I have my own reusable bag on me or b) it’s an absolute emergency.
Yesterday’s Post had a great op-ed piece co-written by Ruben Diaz, Jr., the Bronx borough president, and two dissenting members of the City Council. They bemoaned the unfairness of sticking working people with yet another tax (while not also exempting senior citizens, many of whom live at the poverty level). They find it inappropriate that the extra nickel per bag will go to the store owners, instead of to the public good. And they favor encouraging the use of recyclable shopping bags through stores giving discount to customers who provide their own containers instead of taxing those who use new plastic bags for purchases.