NYC To Force Stores To Take Back Bags
I guess this post falls on the side of “at least they’re doing something.” New York’s City Council has passed a bill that requires any store with five or more locations in NYC or any store that is larger than 5,000sq ft to take back plastic bags. They will have recycling bins for the bags at their location where shoppers can return the billions of bags that the bag boy gives you. If you remember from our plastic recycling primer the other day, these are #4 bags. So you could probably sneak in the plastic sleeves that your newspaper comes in. The bags will be shredded and turned into fibers or new bags eventually. Mayor Bloomberg still has to sign off on the bill, so we’re keeping our fingers crossed.
It’s great that a large city like New York is taking this action and encouraging people to recycle the bags. What about not offering plastic bags at all? San Francisco banned the plastic bags last year. What about charging for plastic bags like Ikea is doing or places in Europe. I went to Germany in the 90’s and had to pay for a bag. If you must have the plastic bags – they could make them out of a corn-based plastic so they biodegrade. Just saying…
I should keep a count of how many plastic bags I actually get in 2008. I keep my ACME Workhorse bag in my coat pocket – but it will eventually get warm out and I’ll have one in my work bag, but that’s not fool-proof. I’ll add in one point that my friend Joy would tell me frequently, plastic bags that you get from the store are reusable, too. You don’t have to go buy some special reusable shopping bag.
To sum it all up…
Good: Forcing stores to take bag their plastic bags
Better: Getting paper bags instead. Bags made from corn-based plastics. Selling bags instead of giving them away.
Best: Bringing your own bag, reuse a different bag, or just refuse a bag.
Source: New York Times
[UPDATE: Apparently California has a law forcing the stores to take back their bags, too. The State of CA uses ~19billion plastic bags year according to this news report.]
You can reuse your plastic bags the next time you shop, they are fairly sturdy so you can get several uses from one bag. I also use them to line small waste containers at home. Some charity resale shops will take your extra plastic bags and use them for their customers. I take my extra bags to the Brown Elephant Resale Shop, which benefits the Howard Brown Clinic.
[...] citywide ban. Ikea also started charging $0.05 per plastic bag last year as well. New York City recently announced that they are forcing stores to take back their plastic bags for recycling – and the store has to figure out [...]
[...] you’re a loyal reader of SCREAM or various other green blogs, you may know that New York City recently passed a restriction that requires certain stores to take back their plastic bags. Chicago is looking to [...]