The City Council introduced three bills regarding the use of paper and plastic bags by shops in the city in September 2008 and the hearing for these bills is coming up on Tuesday, June 16, 2009 at 10:00 AM.
You may remember this bill because a similar measure was propsed and voted down last July (last July only three council members supported the measure - Kraft, Henry, and Clarke).
Bill 08-0205 seeks to require retailers to choose to either not provide customers with any type of bag or to only provide recyclable paper or reusable bags.
Bill 08-0208 seeks to charge 25 cents for each plastic bag used retailers except for the bags used to hold specific foods (like the plastic bags that you would put fruits, vegetables, meat, etc. in).
Bill 08-0209 seeks to charge 25 cents for each paper bag used by retailers (the language looks almost exactly the same as bill 08-0208).
These are fairly long bills and somewhat confusing as there is language describing monthly and quarterly audits and reports, fines, and allowable exceptions.
There is some language that I wasn't clear on: proposed bills 08-0208 and 08-0209 state "the surcharge imposed by this subtitle does not apply a [sic] bag designed for reuse and sold to the customer for not less than 99" cents. This language implies that the least a consumer could purchase a reusable bag for is 99 cents. This doesn't make sense to me. I was at Ikea a couple weeks ago and their bags cost 59 cents. So this bill would mean that I would have to pay an additional 25 cents on any reusable bag purchased that costs less than 99 cents and, as the Ikea example demonstrates, retailers do sell bags for under 99 cents.
So there are a couple issues residents and business owners should be aware of:
- The bills are inconsistent; 08-0205 wants to get rid of the option of plastic bags and 08-0208 proposes a tax on plastic bags
- The city council wants to impose a fee on reusable bags that cost less than 99 cents.
- Dog owners and others that actually reuse those plastic bags should pay attention to this; this will end the supply of them and you're going to have to start buying plastic bags.
Also, one other thing that should probably be address is what happens when you order things like delivery (Can I recommend lo mein?) There is not alernative to the disposable bags the food is delivered in so you have no choice but to pay for the bag. That should probably be addressed as well.
PS I'm as green as the next girl, but this seems a little outlandish - 25 cents is an awful lot per bag.
