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New York Becomes America's Third State To Ban Plastic Bags (yahoo.com)
An anonymous reader quotes the Associated Press:
Gov. Andrew Cuomo and fellow Democrats who control the Legislature have reached a deal to make New York the third state with a ban on single-use plastic grocery bags as they worked to finalize budget agreements, officials said Friday. The ban would prohibit grocery stores from providing plastic bags for most purchases, something California has been doing since a statewide ban was approved in 2016. Hawaii has an effective statewide ban, with all its counties imposing their own restrictions....
New York's ban wouldn't take effect until next March. The plan also calls for allowing local governments the option to impose a 5-cent fee on paper bags, with 3 cents going to the state's Environmental Protection Fund and 2 cents kept by local governments.
Meanwhile, Tennessee's state House and Senate have passed a different kind of bill -- one that bans local Tennessee governments from regulating plastic bags, according to local channel WMC.
One Memphis councilman had proposed allowing the use of plastic bags, but with a seven-cent tax to support clean water initiatives. "But that won't happen if the governor signs the bill to 'ban the bans.'"
New York's ban wouldn't take effect until next March. The plan also calls for allowing local governments the option to impose a 5-cent fee on paper bags, with 3 cents going to the state's Environmental Protection Fund and 2 cents kept by local governments.
Meanwhile, Tennessee's state House and Senate have passed a different kind of bill -- one that bans local Tennessee governments from regulating plastic bags, according to local channel WMC.
One Memphis councilman had proposed allowing the use of plastic bags, but with a seven-cent tax to support clean water initiatives. "But that won't happen if the governor signs the bill to 'ban the bans.'"
Calm down, Florida Man.
This proves the Confederacy and its illegitimate offspring hate the earth as much as themselves.
I don't mind the ban on plastic bags so much. A lot of grocery stores around me have started giving plastic more often then paper, and the plastic bags are shit and rip too easily. I prefer paper and always ask for them whenever there's an option.
Now, charging for paper bags? Even if its just 5c, that's kinda bullshit.
allowing local governments the option to impose a 5-cent fee on paper bags
And there it is, politicians funding their little pork barrel projects.
You can use them again as, say, trash bags, or to hold your dirty shoes when you travel, etc.
Why is the left is so myopic and un-creative?
Single use?! No wonder leftists are always in debt!
I use plastic bags I get from the stores for kitchen waste, for scooping the cat litter, occasionally to carry packed lunches, and various other things.
So if stores stop giving them out, then I need to buy them instead. The folks who sell (admittedly better quality but also more expensive) bags are probably laughing all the way to the bank.
Laws for the environment = laws for people. We only have one habitable planet, thus far -- pays to treat it kindly.
Good Lord, man, talk about a slippery slope argument. Are you seriously blaming the problem of plastic pollution on lonely garbage men who let plastic bags blow away because they don't have a partner on the truck? And then, due to the banning of disposable plastic shopping bags, forecasting the doom of civilization?
I've been using re-usable cloth shopping bags for the last 5-10 years. I keep them in the trunk of the car. They're durable. I wash them periodically. They work just fine for getting groceries, other kinds of shopping, and even non-commerce related toting. I think I paid about $2.00 for each of them. I've used them hundreds of times.
We should stop producing most disposable plastic bags. Oil is too valuable to make into shitty plastic bags just so someone can use them to carry groceries from the store to the car and then the car to the house. Even if the bags actually made it to the landfill and didn't wind up in the ocean, it would still be a waste. Since they do end up in the ocean, it's even worse.
My actual experience with a free disposable plastic bag ban (what these measures really are) in California has been entirely positive, I have truly not heard anyone complain about its effects. You can still get plastic bags, if you want them, most places but they charge a dime for them and they are of really nice size quality, and even though these are "disposable" they are truly reusable and I (and most people) do reuse them. But cheap attractive reasonably strong and durable square polyester carrying bags are everywhere. $2 gets you a nice carrying bag anywhere you go, and you just keep a few in your car, they are very handy.
Before when bags are "free" they really aren't free as right-wingers love to point out (until not convenient). The cost of the bag comes out of the retailers margin, who is in stiff competition in a very low margin commodity retail business. It is a forced march to the bottom, and that bag will be very flimsy. In recent years many "free" bags fell below the level of even marginal usability. Bags that tear, or need multiple bagging just drives up the waste.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
when your streets are littered with bags the problem is the bag not the asshole throwing it on the street? your brain does not work as advertised
You are a citizen of your state first, and then of the United States second.
This is how the US was designed, if you don't like what they're doing in a state, you are free to move to a different one, that has laws, taxation and regulations that you agree with....
One size does not fit all, and this is what is great about the US.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
We re-use plastic bags to line wastebaskets, and to throw away wet materials. We always throw paper bags away.
You don't use paper bags to carry and throw away your recycling? I love doing that.
I can fill a paper bag with cardboard and paper waste, and just chuck the whole thing into the paper recycling container. I can also use it to carry plastic, metal and glass, and after sorting those out into their proper containers, throw the empty paper bags into the paper recycling container. Hands clean, everything recycled.
When I use plastic bags for that, I either have to walk over to the nearest garbage container and throw them away, or carry them back home.
I live in a no-disposable-bag state. And so far, I can count a single-digit number of times that I saw someone who brought his or her own bag. Single-digit. But I see people buying new reusable bags approximately every trip I take to any store. I'm sure there are a few people like you. But there are a lot more people who aren't. And now they're throwing away many times as much plastic.
Oh, please, do tell me, someone who lives in a no-plastic-bag state, what I don't realize about the policy that I live with every day.
Luxury is never having to worry about whether you brought enough bags with you, and whether those extra dollars you have to pay for bags mean that you don't have enough food to get you through the week. These policies are hardest on the working poor. Those people I see buying bags every day? They're not the software engineers. They're the people who clean the software engineers' houses. And for them, these policies are appalling. The left should have had an absolute coronary when the bag bans were proposed, but they were too busy drooling over a fictional belief that these bans will somehow save the planet to notice that their policies have basically turned into a poor tax.
So how many ply are the bags you use for trash? Do you reuse your non-disposable bags as trash bags? Because that's what we used to use for trash bags back before the ban. Now, we have to buy trash bags, and they're a LOT thicker. The people who support these laws simply have no clue how many secondary problems that these bans cause further down the line, particularly for the people who have the least ability to afford them. Thankfully, I don't fall into that category, but I'll still gladly fight for the people who are.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
No his brain works just fine. Humans are naturally arseholes. It's easier to take away that ability than to try and de-arsholeify the human race. Case in point: He made an observation, you replied with an insult. We can fix this by taking away your internet connection thus reducing the amount of shit posted on Slashdot.