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Here's The One Amazing Life Hack For NYC's Coming Plastic Bag Ban
By
Sydney Pereira
Published Feb 24, 2020
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Mary Altaffer/AP/Shutterstock
By
Sydney Pereira
Published Feb 24, 2020
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As New York nears the upcoming ban on most plastic bags next month, the prospect of change is causing some consternation. The packaging industry has raised concerns over a paper bag shortage. Some supermarket and bodega owners feel unprepared. Gristedes and D’Agostino’s took out an ad in the Post claiming “billions of trees will die.” A recent Wall Street Journal op-ed cried the ban is a "moral panic," and recommended we keep sending plastic bags to landfills and incinerators. And, apparently, the ban will be tougher for men.
But New York is hardly the first to implement a ban in hopes of reducing plastic bag waste, and, ideally, encourage New Yorkers to bring their own bags. New York joins seven other states that have passed a ban, becoming the third state behind California and Hawaii last year.
“Message number one: New York is not the first state to be doing this,” Liz Moran, New York Public Interest Research Group’s environmental policy director, told Gothamist. “We’re not going to be the first.”
A 5-cent fee on paper bags set to go into effect for New York City and a handful of other counties. (The fee doesn’t apply to SNAP and WIC recipients.)
So what's the simple yet amazing life hack for consumers in a post-plastic bag New York? It's one that many people around the world have already made a daily habit: bring a reusable bag with you everywhere. BOOM.
If you don’t have a reusable bag yet, or if you can’t afford to buy one, the Department of Sanitation will send you one. The department is also hosting reusable bag giveaway events in the weeks leading up to March 1st, when the ban on most single-use plastic bags goes into effect.
For those who haven’t already gotten into the habit of carrying a reusable bag, Moran says, “It’s best to start simple.”
Some bags can fold down small enough to clip onto a carabiner onto your waist or as a keychain. You could stick them in your pocket or whatever bag you're carrying. Katerina Bogatireva, who runs a package-free produce store, Precycle, in Bushwick, has seen people using baskets or a crate for their groceries instead.
"Generally, people need to find what works for them," Bogatireva said. "It's just like any other habit."
The owner of a low-waste coffee shop in Brooklyn, IXV Coffee, Jenny Cooper adds that she’s seen people make reusable tote bags out of old T-shirts. Cooper keeps a bowl of reusable bags next to her door and always leaves with one folded into whatever she’s carrying.
“Once you get started doing it, it’s like, okay, you get used to it,” Cooper said.
New Yorkers use an estimated 23 billion plastic bags a year. Most wind up in landfills or burned in incinerators, choking wildlife, polluting our waterways, stuck in trees, and contributing to climate change. As Bogatireva put it, “Convenience is becoming an inconvenient thing.”
“We’ve burned our bridges in terms of creating trash, and now we have to backpedal and change our habits to what they were before,” Cooper said, noting single-use plastics weren’t always the norm.
Plastic grocery bags weren’t introduced in the U.S. until 1979. “It seems like one of the easy things to pull back out of our lives," Cooper said.
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Sydney Pereira
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