NY Post
Paper or plastic? New York shoppers may soon find themselves juggling their groceries home.
A paper bag shortage is expected to hit the Empire State hard when Albany’s plastic bag ban goes into effect March 1, The Post has learned.
Retailers are allowed to offer paper sacks for five cents a pop at checkout — but they’re already having trouble stocking the gear due to a nationwide shortfall.
It’s a problem manufacturers say could last up to five years because there simply aren’t enough factories to meet the booming demand, as efforts to reduce environmentally unfriendly plastic bags increase.
“It’s a major issue,” Phil Rozenski, a spokesman for Novolex, one of several major bag manufacturers in North America told The Post.
“It’s so large that there are outages in the Midwest in trying to get supply to retailers.”
New York store owners say they’re working on short-term fixes, including stocking up on more pricey, reusable bags — but are bracing for backlash from customers when the ban hits.
The owner of two Key Food stores in the Bronx, Sal Bonavita, placed orders at the beginning of the year for both paper bags — which he has not offered for years — and reusable bags, but has not received them yet.
“I’m hoping to get some paper bags before March but I know I won’t have enough,” he said.
The grocer told his cashiers this week to warn customers to bring reusable bags in the future. There are also signs in his stores about the new law, but most of his customers are immigrants and he worries they may not be getting the message.
“I expect my customers to be surprised by this in March and our checkout time is going to soar,” Bonavita said.
The 30 Gristedes and D’Agostino grocery stores in the city ordered paper bags in December but have only received one case per store so far — which is “surprising,” owner, John Catsimatidis told The Post.
“Our supplier took the order but also warned us that there is a shortage of paper bags,” Catsimatidis said, “I assume that it’s an excuse for them to raise the prices now,” he guffawed.
And you all think the bail reform law the state passed was bad?
31 comments:
Democrats on parade, NY voters want Democrats in office and they got them.
Better to bring your own. It's what people have done for decades and centuries. The reuseable bags at my stop and shop are huge, sturdy, and cheap. One to two bucks. Plastic disposables are not something we can afford to keep creating and throwing away- it ends up as microfilaments in your air and drinking water.
In the 1970's when my brother and I shopped in Spain, we found ourselves with a pile of groceries and no bag. That was our introduction to net bags that worked better than any plastic bag could. So much waste in the U.S. You folks should travel more! Not much scrap paper in Germany either.
More Climate B.S. just another way to tax the shite out of us !
Meanwhile China and India do whatever they want to the environment.
Hurricanes, heat waves, floods, and droughts have happened before and would happen again, even if humans didn’t exist.
"How Dare They"
Sounds like a potential black market plastic bag opportunity here for us out of staters with too many plastic bags in our cupboards. Plastic bag smuggling is sure to be on the rise in communist NYC.
Without all the endless plastic bags from shopping, what will we use for garbage bags for small pails?
What next paper condoms?
An other scam under the disguise of saving the environment they squeeze more money out of people. Please spare me the lecture, I have plastic bags, good quality plastic bags that simply disintegrated after 3 years. Mean..dust!
Good Riddance! Plastic bags are commonly littered, end up in tree branches and catch basins, or are thrown out after five minutes of service, only to persist in landfills for decades or hundreds of years.
Just keep a bunch of the reusable totes in your car, at home, at work, and you'll never miss plastic bags.
Tenants who live in high-rise buildings will miss the plastic bags: they use them for food trash, tie the plastic bags, and push them down the chute in the trash room to the compactor below in the building basement. No mess.
How laws get passed in blue shitholes.
If it makes a group of libtards feel good about themselves the law passes. Unintended consequences be damned
Just buy reusable bags. Not so hard
The only reasons I'll miss plastic grocery bags are for lining the bathroom trash pail and cat litter bin, transporting heavily soiled items like oily tools, and keeping books and electronics dry in the rain. Big deal. They announced the passage of this law almost a year ago, and since then, I've built up a stash of plastic grocery bags that will serve those purposes for years, and when they run out, I'll buy a box of diaper pail liners that will serve the same purposes.
Most plastic grocery bags are used exactly once and get thrown out, with many ending up caught in trees, fences, and storm drains. Those that reach the landfills and oceans take thousands of years to degrade. Good riddance to them. Our grandparents and great grandparents didn't have plastic bags and somehow managed to raise large families by bringing cloth sacks to the grocery stores. I would recommend staying away from the reusable bags that they sell in the supermarkets. They're made of crap spun plastic and are prone to abrasions. Get some sturdy canvas bags. They last for years and can be machine washed and dried.
@warp10
Baloney. How do you know hundreds of years? Why the fuck you spreading stupid lies? Also you talking about people littering, well my friend if no bags I'm more than sure they find other means.
Our grandparents and great grandparents didn't have plastic bags
and Internet and smartphones. Heck why don't we just live in caves like in the good old days?
I’m all for encouraging ppl to bring their own bags, and to reuse plastic bags... but paper bags are useless for carrying large amounts of product at any kind of distance (imagine lugging one’s weekly grocery haul on mass transit, in a paper bag?). And what if you have to shop on a rainy day? Grocery stores should post a box next to the register where ppl can deposit lightly used plastic shopping bags, and shoppers can grab those to pack their purchases. Some big chain drugstores have plastic bag recycling bins at their store entrances- grocery stores could do the same.
The Nanny State is in full force !
This law is not good for my wardrobe!
Love it! Travel to Germany! No plastic bag problem in good ol' Germany, they incinerate!
Costco better bag up.
I've been bringing my own strong big shopping bags for years, its no big deal.
Next got to get rid off all the plastic yogurt containers being pushed by our petroleum company's as a way of dumping their toxic byproducts.
New York City recycles plastic my ass !!–
For the last several years I have been carefully scrubbing all plastic number 1 (PET) and number 2 (HDPE) containers (such as most deli containers that you get when you buy tomatoes, sunflower seed & snacks or sliced fruit) and collecting & cleaning them (so they don't stink and attract the rats)for NYC recycling.
Just yesterday at work the superintendent of the building brought a giant bag of deli containers back up from the re-cycling bin and said ‘This all needs to go in the trash – I'm got hit with tickets. NYC won’t recycle it‘. I stared at him disbelief until he pulled out a flyer from the NYC government stating that it WON’T TAKE ANY PLASTIC EXCEPT PLASTIC BOTTLES – even easily recyclable #1 (PET) and #2 (HDPE) plastic!
This shit blew my mind – why would New Yorks shitty government waste a chance to recycle all the PET and HDPE in non-bottle containers such as fruit and deli containers? Especially when most other USA cities even that socialist euro dump called Belgium recycle ALL plastics?
Where is the know it all dictator governor bust blowing billions of $$$ fixing that 7 levels of hell for tourists who don't live here and not this?
This crap lasts over 1000 years and is already making it way to the shores of China.
Paraffin coated paper and cardboard containers are fine, they hold your milk, coffee, Ice Cream and stick of butter right ?
This city is really turning to shit, its so dam depressing.
- Zoé
No I don’t want to use a dirty canvas bag
Another stupid idea like the people that who have a problem with plastic straws
No body stops to think of the people who make a living printing specialty plastic bags or those who sell them
How is this stupid law going to be enforced?
And no libertards- not sure if you’ve noticed - NYC is not Europe
****No I don’t want to use a dirty canvas bags****
Do you know how dirty a full of viruses stock off the supermarket shelves is?
I wash in a little bleach or wipe with alcohol everything I buy before putting it away.
Who and what do you think handles all this stuff, especially fruits and vegetables?
I also saw a woman who's 6 brat wilding kids were groping everything in sight.
These immigrants from south the border are filthy inconsiderate slobs, you have to wash everything these days.
If your canvas or nylon bag is dirty wash that too !!
Dirty canvas bags? Supermarkets have dirty
hands all over the carts, cans etc. You don’t want a dirty canvas bag then recycle those plastic bags in those canvas bags. I have been using reusable bags for quite some time. They hold more and the stand up well in the car.
No plastic bags, but electric cars are cool.
Unbelievable what they do under the disguise of protecting the environment.
Add the global warming, cooling climate change with Greta Thunberg and we got a great circus by stupid people.
George..miss you man:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rld0KDcan_w
Getting use to not using plastic bags is not a bad thing but here are the facts on plastic pollution.
China, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam are dumping more plastic into oceans than the rest of the world combined , according to a 2017 report by Ocean Conservancy
"How Dare They" !
Zoe ... Whoever wrote and handed out that message about recycling plastics needs to be reported. Call your Community Board and Council Member. Here are the instructions for recycling plastic
https://www.grownyc.org/recycling/whattorecycle
Why is the consumer punished? Why aren't biodegradable plastic bags being made mandatory for stores to use by law? Too much common sense?
Quote "Here are the instructions for recycling plastic"
Not too sure about that, no wonder everybody's confused or misinformed, including the person that posted that, Miss Zoe, Code enforcement, the building superintendents, Community Boards and Council Members.
These jackasses cant even fix the website.
When you click for details you get the following
"We're Sorry.
You have reached an outdated or non-existing page.
Stay in touch with City Hall"
https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/dsny/zerowaste/residents/what-to-recycle-for-residents.shtml
Another beauty good below on the "how to" and "What to recycle" videos:
https://www.grownyc.org/recycling/whattorecycle
NOTE: As of April 23, 2013, the NYC Department of Sanitation (DSNY) accepts more kinds of plastic for recycling.
Our instructional videos, produced in 2009, do not include this change, but are otherwise accurate.
Produced and outdated since in 2009 but "Otherwise accurate"
What the f_ck is wrong with these people at city hall? Where is all our tax dollars going, don't these dumb f_cks know you can make a simple, more informative up to date video with cellphone in 2020.
((Zoe ... Whoever wrote and handed out that message about recycling plastics needs to be reported))
Thank you it appears the superintendant was scammed.
Sanitation never picked up the recyclables at all, it seems the trucks get full turn around and never come back. Not that the recycling material was wrong.
The crooks are picking on the city’s complete failure and incompetence and making fake tickets, thanks to cheap and sophisticated hand-held printers that can make fake tickets appear real.
Keep in mind our superintendent (landlord’s brother) is near 70 years old, from Italy and does not use a computer and doesn't want any part of dealing with the city.
But it’s been reported today.
I looked it up.
Yes indeed sites like Snopes and DefensiveDriving.com are also warning about fake citations.
DOZENS of landlords reportedly received fake tickets over garbage & recyclables. It all the department of sanitations fault for giving the crooks this opportunity. WHY CANT THE SHITTY MAYOR JUST MAKE MORE CREWS AVAILABLE TO PICKUP THE GARBAGE & RECYCLABLES?
Didn't he recently find $ millions in extra police patrols to protect Synagogues near his own neighborhood?
Same shit again on City Island tonight.
At BFs house on Hawkins st right now as I type this 8:47 PM.
Sanitation came around 9:15 AM collected 1/2 the block and never came back. Loaded garbage pails & recyclables at the curbs now must wait till next Monday looks like hell.
Zoe
NYS Bag Ban Info here :
https://www.dec.ny.gov/chemical/50034.html
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