Many New York stores will have to start recycling plastic shopping bags under a bill Gov. David Paterson signed into law on Saturday. The law will take effect January 1.
The law will apply to stores with more than 10,000-square-feet of retail space or those that are part of a chain with more than five stores, each with more than 5,000-square-feet of retail space. They’ll be required to put out bins where shoppers can deposit the bags, recycle the returned bags and record how many are recycled.
Local governments are pre-empted from adopting their own shopping-bag recycling laws with the new state law. However, Paterson said he expects lawmakers to amend the state law to include recycling of film plastics and allow New York City to retain its plastic-bag recycling program.
Judith Enck, Paterson’s deputy secretary for the environment, said statistics show that consumers throw away roughly 100 million of the bags nationally every year.
(Source: MyFoxNY)
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2 Responses
Is this the same garbage (pun intended) as the proposal to charge the consumer 6c per plastic bag? That goes well with a large BP store now charging 55c for each box if you don’t get deliveries. And where I live, they rarely deliver (midnight???)
Where are laws to protect consumers getting ripped off?
How are you getting ripped off? The store has the lowest prices around, and cardboard boxes are expensive. You are not forced to take the boxes, and can take bags for free. They make it clear there’s a charge. Laws are meant to protect consumers from being scammed, not to protect idiots from making stupid decisions.