By adamg on Sun., 12/17/2017 - 11:24 pm
WFXT reports Mayor Walsh has signed a City Council proposal that will prohibit local stores from using those thin plastic bans and will require a 5-cent fee for recyclable bags made of thicker plastic or paper.
City Councilors Matt O'Malley (Jamaica Plain, West Roxbury) and Michelle Wu (at large), who proposed the ban, said it would help the environment, curb an ugly part of the current streetscape, reduce the use of oil and save the city money - in terms of reduced trash pickups and costs for removing the stuff from the city's recycling stream.
Stores will keep the new 5-cent fee.
Boston residents currently use 357 million of the bags each year, O'Malley estimates.
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Comments
Nomenclature
By perruptor
Mon, 12/18/2017 - 6:12am
Adam, they are all recyclable. I think the word you wanted to use there is reusable. Of course, the thin plastic bags can be reused, but their fragility makes them less reusable.
Perhaps
By adamg
Mon, 12/18/2017 - 7:48am
Good point, there are bag recycling bins at the can returns of your finer supermarkets. I was thinking of the city's residential recycling bins, which you're not supposed to use for those bags - workers at the city's recycling company spend a lot of time getting them out of their sorting equipment.
Engineering problem
By perruptor
Mon, 12/18/2017 - 3:14pm
Bags clogging equipment is an engineering problem. Banning the bags from recycling bins is a social solution. The net effect of that ban is removing lots of the bags from the recycling stream, and diverting them to the waste stream. That's not a good. The recycling-facility-equipment makers need to hire better engineers.
Some are not recyclable
By SuperChingon
Mon, 12/18/2017 - 11:44am
Especially the majorly thin produce bags; many of these get thrown out during processing even if they are put into the blue bin.
https://livegreen.recyclebank.com/because-you-aske...
All plastic bags are
By anon
Mon, 12/18/2017 - 11:52am
All plastic bags are recyclable, whether they're majorly thin or not.
The problem is they jam the machinery at sorting plants if they're mixed in with bottles and cans. They have to be collected separately, most commonly at the plastic bag recycle bins at the grocery store.
A bag ban won't solve this problem, unless they also ban bread bags, cereal box liners, ziploc bags, diaper packages, meat shrink wrap, etc. The correct solution is for the city to stick large NO PLASTIC BAGS stickers on everyone's recycle bins.
By the way, the other item that's terrible for recycling machinery is coat hangers. They can do thousands of dollars of damage. Video tapes were also bad, but that problem solved itself.
What about the plastic nip
By anon
Mon, 12/18/2017 - 6:26am
What about the plastic nip bottles that are all over sidewalks and the plastic needles with orange caps ? For Christmas I want a biohazard box with a Grab-it to use when walking to the bus to get to work.
Whatabout
By anon
Mon, 12/18/2017 - 12:07pm
Whataboutism?
This is a money grab cloaked
By LongIslandBridge
Mon, 12/18/2017 - 6:58am
This is a money grab cloaked as environmentalism. Will Walsh give up his giant SUV with the motor running all day for a hybrid? Hello no! UHub will have a report in two years that the 'green' tax collected is used ironically for something environmentally destructive or to pay someone you never heard of in a office you never heard of a lot of money to do nothing.
Money grab?
By adamg
Mon, 12/18/2017 - 7:49am
By whom? Big Paper Bag?
Follow the money Adam. I
By anon
Mon, 12/18/2017 - 8:39am
Follow the money Adam. I guarentee the city merges it into the general fund never to be heard from again. You are talking about a dinosaur mayor which doesn't even want BigBellies or more recycling bins on the street or in parks. Marty could care less about litter. This is a PR stunt and a new tax to prop up the budget.
Sorry for the omission
By adamg
Mon, 12/18/2017 - 9:54am
I'll add this to my original post: The city gets none of the money - the stores keep the 5-cent fee, similar to the way the state doesn't get any of the money from bottle and can deposits.
And you are already losing the 5 cents per bag
By anon
Mon, 12/18/2017 - 12:11pm
In most supermarkets, they give you a 5 cent credit for each reusable bag you use.
So, if you are not using reusable bags now, you are already out 5 cents for each bag they give you. Your cost won't change when the new law goes into effect.
Which stores are these?
By zetag
Mon, 12/18/2017 - 4:07pm
And that's a serious question, because I use reusable bags all the time and have never gotten a credit that I know of.
Whole Foods and Target (at
By anon
Mon, 12/18/2017 - 5:12pm
Whole Foods and Target (at least the new small ones).
CVS used to have a scheme where you could buy a membership in the reusable bag rebate club. But store employees often didn't get it, and gave you plastic bags anyway.
Trader Joe's used to pester you for your contact information for a raffle if you reused a bag. No thanks.
Roche Bros for one
By anon
Mon, 12/18/2017 - 5:57pm
And I know Stop & Shop used to to it, but I don't know for sure if they still do. Trader Joe's used to enter you in a raffle for a gift card or something if you used a reusable bag, but I don't know if they still do.
The Mayor was not the driving
By anon
Mon, 12/18/2017 - 10:21am
The Mayor was not the driving force behind this, the City Council was. He did not want it and only signed it because all Councillors voted for it.
Moneywise the city makes nothing off of this. In fact with enforcement and education added in this will cost money.
Hey, now!
By Brian Riccio
Mon, 12/18/2017 - 9:54am
That's the Howie Carr defense! A money grab so that the solons and pols can keep rippin ya off and say it's helpin the planet! Ya know?
Mayoral SUV
By Parkwayne
Mon, 12/18/2017 - 11:00am
The ecological footprint of having an SUV for the mayor to get around the city is a non-issue. It's one car and sure it would be nice to have an eco friendlier vehicle, it literally isn't worth thinking about or change until this lease is up.
The mayor should lead by
By anon
Mon, 12/18/2017 - 11:45am
The mayor should lead by example.
Priorities
By anon
Mon, 12/18/2017 - 3:31pm
Urban government in the US has their head up their ass. Our real estate taxes are sky high, our schools suck,the City is pushing out the blue collar jobs and families, there are shootings every day and all they can do is charge more for plastic bags? Are you kidding?
Our elected officials are not so simple minded as you think
By adamg
Mon, 12/18/2017 - 3:40pm
They can work on more than one issue at a time. If anything, this one has happened pretty slowly - O'Malley first proposed it last year.
We have some of the lowest RE
By anon
Tue, 12/19/2017 - 7:54am
We have some of the lowest RE taxes around. What are you talking about?!
Freedom
By perruptor
Tue, 12/19/2017 - 12:19pm
Some people think civilization should be free, and object to paying anything for it, ever.
Newport Ave Stop & Shop
By anon
Mon, 12/18/2017 - 8:07am
Will still be giving out free plastic bags. Let Hizxoner know that's where you will be shopping.
Dear Hizxoner,
By zetag
Mon, 12/18/2017 - 4:14pm
I am writing to let you know that in response to the City of Boston's new plastic bag ban, I will from now on be taking a $10 Uber to Quincy and another $10 Uber ride back to Boston in order to avoid paying the $0.15 fee on plastic bags or the $3.00 investment into re-usable bags.
Yours truly,
The Village Idiot
Rats will need new insulation materials...
By Grant Young
Mon, 12/18/2017 - 11:23am
I think those plastic bags are an urban pestilence.
I, for one, welcome our new re-usable bag overlords.
So you'll still be able to BUY little plastic bags...
By CopleyScott17
Mon, 12/18/2017 - 11:25am
...you just won't be able to re-use ones you'd get at the grocery store?
Oh, THAT'S a good idea.
You can reuse the ones you buy
By Ron Newman
Mon, 12/18/2017 - 11:47am
Why wouldn't you?
I'll bet you...
By Kaz
Mon, 12/18/2017 - 12:47pm
If you get 20 from a grocery run and re-use 5 of them, you wasted 15. If you buy 5 of them and use them, you wasted nothing. You can even buy them and take them to the grocery store and use them for your groceries then take them home and re-use them. Nobody's stopping you.
People don't reuse as many of these bags as they get. They cachet them in drawers and little doily-ed dispenser things and never realize just how many they get versus how many they use. When the cache gets full, they throw out the oldest/grossest ones and never consider how many they aren't "re-using" because it cost them nothing to get them in the first place.
And for every person who responds that they absolutely use every single one they get, I bet there are 9 others who don't even reuse ONE of the ones they get.
Bag hoarders
By deedle
Mon, 12/18/2017 - 1:43pm
Too true. Here in Cambridge, the BYOB ordinance went into effect 18 months ago, without significant issues as far as I know. We still end up with enough plastic bags for small rubbish bin liners and temporary wet-item reinforcement. When we run short, we can always collect a buttload from my mother-in-law in NYC (where a bag law was blocked by Cuomo early this year) -- she's hoarded them for years, and has thousands rolled up into tiny balls and stuffed into virtually every drawer and cabinet.
Isn't it convenient that you
By anon
Mon, 12/18/2017 - 5:08pm
Isn't it convenient that you have to go 200 miles to get something that used to be available locally?
stuck in tree
By anony-mouse
Mon, 12/18/2017 - 3:00pm
A plastic bag got stuck high in a tree near my house maybe 10 years ago. For a year or two it was an entire bag, then started to shred. Now it's down to about the size of a napkin up there, but it's still up there, blowing in the wind...
So I'd be against this. But I think I'm for it. Although my preferred solution would have been to just add the nickel fee to all bags, so people would think twice about having their chips or Coke from the conah store (or CVS) put in one.
I stopped using reusable bags
By anon
Tue, 12/19/2017 - 2:24pm
I stopped using reusable bags because the ones I had were so large that I couldn't carry them when they were full, and it was an ordeal to beg baggers not to fill them, or basically step aside and re-bag everything. I think back then you got a discount for each resuable bag you used, and they thought I was just trying to get an extra 10 cents off or something. The store I go to now doesn't have baggers, so it wouldn't be an issue.
But I will say they are handy for cat litter, and making them hard to come by won't make me need to scoop the litter less. I would also pass some to my sister's whose town already banned them. She has a disabled child and uses them several times a day to dispose of pampers. I suppose we'll both just have to start paying for poop disposal bags.
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