Reusable Bag Giveaways Coming To Bayside Ahead Of Plastic Bag Ban

BAYSIDE, QUEENS — With a state ban on single-use plastic bags scheduled to go into effect March 1, the city's sanitation department is distributing free reusable bags to help Bayside residents prepare for the change.

State Sen. John Liu is sponsoring a reusable bag giveaway at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 20, at Korean Community Services in Bayside.

The Northwest Bayside Civic Association will host another giveaway at 7 p.m. on Feb. 25 at Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament Church.

And officials will hand out even more bags at the Alley Pond Park Winter Activities and Games event the afternoon of Saturday, Feb. 29, in coordination with City Council Member Barry Grodenchik and the city's parks department.

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Since 2016, the Department of Sanitation has given away more than 70,000 of the reusable bags, which are made of 90-percent-recycled material and fold into a built-in pouch with a carabiner clip.

Department of Sanitation officials said Monday they plan to distribute another 100,000 bags by March 1, when the plastic bag ban starts.

State legislators passed the ban on single-use plastic bags last year. When it goes into effect, businesses will start charging five cents for paper carryout bags; shoppers who bring reusable bags won't be charged.

Roughly 10 billion single-use plastic bags are discarded each year in New York City, making up about 2.5 percent of the city's waste stream, according to the Department of Sanitation.

Sanitation workers collect more than 1,700 tons of the bags each week.

“City residents use billions of single-use carryout bags every year, and they are frequently used for only a few minutes at a time,” Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia said. “Plastic bags are particularly troublesome as contaminants in our recycling, as they often clog machinery, and we’ve all seen plastic bags stuck in city trees around the city."

For more information on the plastic bag ban, visit the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation website at on.ny.gov/byobagny.