10-cent grocery bag fee proposed in New York City

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NEW YORK (AP) — New York City grocery shoppers may soon
face a 10-cent fee on all plastic and paper bags, enlisting the nation’s
largest city in a growing green movement.
The City Council
introduced a bill Wednesday that would impose the fee in an effort to
spur customers to bring their own reusable bags. Supporters of the bill
say it would benefit the city’s economy as well as its environment.
"The
bags get stuck in storms drains, they cause flooding and they litter
our beaches," Councilman Melissa Chen of Manhattan, one of the
co-sponsors of the legislation, said at a news conference on the City
Hall steps. "And they cost New York City a lot of money."
City
residents use 1 billion disposable plastic bags a year and it costs the
city $10 million annually to ship used bags to landfills, according to
the bills’ supporters.
The measure is expected to be voted upon
within the next few weeks. If it passes, New York will join such cities
as Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington to try to curb the
use of plastic bags.
"Plastic bags are not central to our life
happiness or health but make an enormous impact on our world," said
Lilly Belanger of the environmental advocacy group the No Impact
Project. "With this simple step, we can be a model for rest of country."
As if to underscore their words, a plastic bag then blew above the news conference, drawing jeers from
the crowd.
The
10-cent fee would not be a tax. Instead, the money raised from the bag
sales would benefit the store owners who supplied the bags.
Though
grocery stores supply the vast majority of the disposable bags used
across the city, the fee would also apply to bags sold at other retail
stores. It would not apply to restaurant deliveries or most street food
carts. The fee would also not be charged to shoppers who use
public-assistance programs to buy food.
Councilman Brad Lander
said the fee also applied to paper bags not because the bill was
intended as a method to raising revenue, but as an incentive for
customers to opt for reusable bags.
"Plastic is worse than paper, but it’s best is if people bring their own bags," said Lander.

Some
business owners have complained that the fee could keep shoppers away. A
similar measure was introduced last summer but failed to gather the
necessary support and therefore had to be re-introduced in front of the
new council, which took office in January. Nineteen councilmembers are
co-sponsoring the new bill, seven short of the votes needed to pass it.
Council
Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito said Wednesday that she would need to
review the bill before determining her position. Her close ally, Mayor
Bill de Blasio, stopped short of endorsing the bill a day earlier but
said that reducing the number of plastic bags was "a societal goal."
"The plastic bags are a problem, and our goal has to be to reduce the use of plastic bags," de
Blasio said.
Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights
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