New York May Join Crackdown On Plastic Bags
NEW YORK - New York City may follow an international trend and crack down on plastic shopping bags, seeking to cut their use with a plan officials hope will be a model for other cities.
A proposal introduced on Monday requires stores larger than 5,000 square feet to set up an in-store recycling program and sell reusable bags.
Some 700 food stores plus large retailers such as Target and Home Depot would have to collect used bags and provide a system for turning them over to a manufacturer or to third-party recycling firms.
Stores would be required to use bags printed with a reminder to consumers: “Please return this bag to a participating store for recycling.”
Environmentalists have targeted plastic bags as a scourge that take years to biodegrade and contaminate soil and water.
“We think this strikes the right balance between conscience and convenience,” said Councilman Peter Vallone, a co-sponsor of the bill, which needs approval from the city council and environmentally minded Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
The bill was expected to come to a vote within several months.
In 2002, Ireland introduced a tax on plastic bags, reducing their use by 90 percent. Some communities in Australia have banned them in retail stores since 2003.
In March, San Francisco became the first U.S. city to ban plastic bags from large supermarkets and the state of California enacted a law in July that requires large stores to take back plastic bags and encourage their reuse.
Americans use an estimated 84 billion plastic bags annually, and the production of plastic bags worldwide uses over 12 million barrels of oil per year, the council said.
Recycled bags can be used to produce new bags plus a variety of plastic products, including furniture.
Estimates vary widely for how long it takes plastic bags to decompose, and some environmentalists say it is impossible to know because plastics have only been used commercially in recent decades.
© Reuters 2007
Good to see, but I’ll be much more impressed with our governments if they shared the same concern for the enviroment and banned the use of depleted uranium for weapons of war.
My supermarket in France did this a long time ago, but I agree with KEM, as well. Hopefully it would never be an either or
Most plastic bags are made out of PETROLEUM so I see nothing wrong with that especially since this country is too consumerist. We’re gonna have to reduce our dependency on foreign oil in more ways than one and this is a MAJOR one too.
Better yet, why not overturn the hemp ban and turn to hemp plastic bags which are more DURABLE and require NO PETROLEUM whatsoever? Bio-degradable plastic is a great idea because we can not only reduce our dependence on foreign oil significantly but also cut down drastically on global warming !
It’s no surprise to hear that France is aware of this issue. I believe the French have been thinking in these terms for quite some time.
I live in China, and try to get people here to do some of these same “small” reduction activities. The population of Shanghai is about 17 million persons give or take a few million depending on the current level of laborers in the city from the outlying areas. Can you imagine the effect of these sorts of conservation activities multiplied by the millions?
The older generation here is quite naturally conservative in their use of items such as shopping bags, but the old ways here are quickly disappearing in a wave of worldwide sibling induced “use it up as fast as possible” shopping frenzy.
I don’t think that a measure that “requires stores larger than 5,000 square feet to set up an in-store recycling program and sell reusable bags” is the answer. The recycling programs collect only 1% of the bags and reusable bags are already sold everywhere.
The answer is to change people’s habits. Banning the single use bags or putting a bag tax in place is the only way to make this effective.
I make reusable bags in San Francisco (www.myownbag.com) and have worked with the city to put a bag tax measure. It has been a difficult process. Some of the political issues I described in beyond chron: http://www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=4296#more
If NY’s mayor wants to make a change, he should look at how other cities that had success with this did it (tax or ban).