Trending Now
Does anyone actually use reusable grocery bags, or do they just exist for the purpose of sitting in our houses and making us feel guilty?
Welp, New Yorkers, here’s a good reason to actually start remembering to reuse those bags: New York State is officially banning plastic bags, and some counties will impose a fee on paper bags too.
New York is the second U.S. state to ban plastic bags after California.
Photo Credit: iStock
Governor Andrew Cuomo first proposed the plan last year, and it goes into effect in March 2020. Goodbye, single-use plastic bags! Mostly, anyway. Some types of plastic bags – like newspaper bags or trash bags – will be exempted from the ban.
Instead, customers will have to use either paper bags or reusable bags. Individual counties can opt into a 5-cent fee on paper bags, though it’s not a mandatory part of the new law. The idea, it seems, is to encourage people to use reusable bags as much as possible, rather than paper or plastic.
Photo Credit: iStock
Environmentally speaking, this new law definitely marks progress. Plastic bags are basically the bane of the planet’s existence. They’re hugely wasteful, non-biodegradable, harmful to wildlife, environmentally costly to produce…the list goes on and on.
“These bags have blighted our environment and clogged our waterways,” Governor Cuomo said in a statement. He said the new plan will be a way to “protect our natural resources for future generations of New Yorkers.”
And the rest of us benefit, too.
