Possible proposal, charge for plastic bags

[Midnight Mike]

Mayor Bloomberg wants to nickel and dime you at the grocery store - taxing you an extra 5 cents for every plastic bag you take home.

The controversial charge could raise at least $16 million for the cash-strapped city while keeping tons of plastic out of landfills, city officials said Thursday - but some outraged shoppers aren't buying it.


http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/200 ... _mayo.html

[flyboy 28]

...so just use paper?

[AirtrafficController]

There are stores in Europe that do charge for plastic bags. Customers bring their own "cloth" bags for grocery shopping. It's fine for some stores to tax plastic bags but a city wide tax is going to be disapproved.

[Matt Molnar]

There are stores in Europe that do charge for plastic bags.

Whole Foods and Ikea have also begun doing it here.

I like this idea on the surface, but enforcing it would seem to be impractical, if not impossible. Whole Foods counters are constructed in a way that the bags are behind the counter in the control of the cashier, but just about every other supermarket checkout in the city (and most places in the country for that matter) has the bags out in the open so people can bag their own groceries, and therefore can take as many as they want. It's just not very practical for the cashier to be counting bags when he/she is supposed to be concentrating on counting money and such.

[cancidas]

i was just thinking, that instead of being completely outraged over this tax [which i think is meant to get people to realize the error in thier ways] one could just smarten up a bit and use a re-usable bag.

i bought this kind of bag in 1997 and have been using it ever since:


i works equally well for groceries, laundry, for three-day travel, and loads more. only cost me $60 back then.