Brooklyn Politician Wants Plastic Bag Fee by Earth Day

Photo by Kate Ter Harr

BROOKLYN, NY —Six weeks before Earth Day, New York City Councilmember Brad Lander, representing a large swath of Brooklyn between Kensington and the Columbia Waterfront, is re-upping his call to charge NYC shoppers for plastic and paper bags handed out at retail and grocery stores.

Lander introduced legislation in March 2014 that would charge residents 10 cents per bag (with the exception of residents paying for their goods with food stamps.)

According to the NYC Department of Sanitation, in 2013, New York's garbage workers hauled away 84,000 tons of plastic retail bags and sleeves — costing the city an estimated $8.4 million.

Lander thinks his bill can change that equation.

“Last year, we said bag fees by Earth Day,” he recently told the Gotham Gazette. “I’m saying it again. Bag fees by Earth Day.”

Paul Leonard, a spokesman for the bill's leading co-sponsor, Councilmember Margaret Chin, echoed those sentiments. Leonard said Chin believes putting a price on bags "will drastically reduce the amount of single use bags currently being sent to landfills" — which will in turn help the city hit its goal of sending zero trash to landfills by 2030.

The legislation currently has 22 sponsors, but hasn't seen action in council chambers since November 2014.

At that hearing, it received a skeptical response from some members of the Committee on Sanitation and Solid Waste Management, according to Politico New York.

Councilmember Robert Cornegy, also of Brooklyn, said the bill would force bodega owners to have "dozens of negative interactions with their customers every day," while Councilmember James Vacca, of the Bronx, described it as "a tax that's going to hit people least able to afford this tax."

(Cornegy and Vacca did not respond to Patch's requests for comment Tuesday regarding their current position on the bill.)

The American Progressive Bag Alliance, an plastics industry trade group, has taken a similar stance.

“This tax is a direct attack on working families and it will fail to make any environmental progress for the city," Alliance executive director Lee Califf said in a statement sent to Patch. "It makes no sense for councilmembers to try to pass a law that would make trips to the store even more expensive for the millions of hardworking New Yorkers who already struggle to make ends meet.”

In support of its position, the Alliance points to research suggesting, among other things, that the production and recycling of plastic bags takes less of an environmental toll than the production of reusable alternatives.

The Alliance also argues that the plastic bag industry supports 10,000 American jobs.

However, in an interview with Patch, bag fee advocate Jennie Romer, a lawyer who said she helped Lander and Chin write their bill, focused on the issue of waste.

She noted that a 2012 bag fee implemented in San Jose, Calif., reduced plastic bag use and encouraged renewable alternatives, according to city data. Romer also cited a 2013 study from Washington, D.C. — another municipality which taxes bags — that found the fee cut use while remaining popular among local businesses and residents.

Romer cites the nation of Ireland as perhaps her most compelling example. A 2006 study found that nation's 2002 plastic bag fee reduced usage by 90 percent.

Lander spokesman John Schaefer did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the bill's likelihood of passing by Earth Day.

But Paul Leonard, Chin's spokesman, told Patch by phone: “We believe we have a majority of Councilmembers, and we’re looking forward to this moving forward."