The plastic bag ban was a huge mistake

Kings County Politics

As the plastic bag ban is set to become law next week under the reasoning that it will decrease endangerment to the environment, new studies are showing that recyclable bags might endanger your health and maybe spread the formidable coronavirus. 

In the June 2018 issue of the Journal of Environmental Health, the trade publication published public health professor Dr. Ryan Sinclair’s scientific paper entitled, “The Spread of a Norovirus Surrogate via Reusable Grocery Bags in a Grocery Supermarket,” in which he concluded that reusable bags are very effective in transmitting infectious viruses from private homes to supermarket grocery carts and checkout stands. 

Sinclair, along with a team of scientists, conducted an experiment where shoppers were given grocery bags that were inoculated with a surrogate virus as a stand-in for the Norovirus. Unsurprisingly, the virus was found in the highest percentages on the shoppers’ hands, the checkout stand, and on the clerks’ hands. 

“These results indicate that reusable bags, contaminated with a virus from their household, have the potential to spread disease and put shoppers at risk of illness,” Sinclair wrote in a letter to the City Council when the law was being debated on the city level. 

To make matters worse, according to the bag the ban website, the millions of the petroleum-based reusable bags are mostly imported from the Far East because of the cheap price tags and it is questionable if they are sanitized properly. Additionally, microbiologists have found E. coli, salmonella, fecal coliform, and other harmful bacteria in reusable bags.

Unwashed bags that come across bacteria that can last a couple days, like the Coronavirus which can last anywhere from two days to nine hours on surfaces, will lead to the contagion being spread faster, according to Brooklyn architect and environmentalist Allen Moses, who has been consumed with the issue for several years.
 
Moses noted that New York City has a rat problem, particularly in the subway. Wild rats carry the bacteria C. difficile, which is an important cause of diarrhea and intestinal disease that kills 14,000 people in America per year. Reusable bags are more porous and people resting them down on the subway floor are more liable to pick up these germs and take them home, said Moses.

In 31 days, New Yorkers will have their hands full after buying groceries...

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?

The paper bag nickel fee from plastic bag ban is an austerity measure placed on middle and lower class citizens

QNS


After City Council approved a bill that would place a tax on single-use paper bags, Councilman Robert Holden is calling the move burdensome on the middle class.

Set to take place after a state-wide ban on plastic bags takes effect, the paper bag tax would put the cost of five cents on each paper bag used in a transaction at store across the city.

“As if it wasn’t enough that we are taxed to death in every facet of our lives, the New York City Council has just passed another regressive tax,” Holden said. “While ensuring our environment is clean for generations to come, a line must be drawn somewhere. I voted NO because this legislation will only add more pressure on our senior citizens who already live on a fixed income, and will once again put the burden on the middle class.”

The plastic bag ban was passed in the budget at the beginning of April making New York the third state in the nation to take a stand against the bags which are not biodegradable and land a heavy impact on wildlife.

California imposed its ban in 2016 and Governor Andrew Cuomo proposed the ban a year ago place emphasis on an earlier time when shopper only had paper bags to turn to.

Mayor Bill de Blasio signed an executive order on April 11 intended to be the beginning of the end for reusable plastics and said while even paper products should be reduced, there needs to be option for low-income New Yorkers.

“We are looking at a whole host of questions around reusable products,” de Blasio said. “This is something I’ve talked about in terms of getting rid of plastic bags and paper bags that we’ve got to come up with some kind of option for folks of limited means. And we’re looking at everything. We’ll be looking at plastic bottles. You’re going to see a number of things coming out.”

The biggest and ugliest state budget bill of all includes congestion pricing, plastic bag ban, and more authoritarian powers and an undeserved fat raise for Mario's son Governor Cuomo

New York Times

 After weeks of intraparty bickering, the New York State Legislature and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on Sunday signed off on a $175 billion budget that was wreathed with progressive initiatives, including changes to the cash bail system, a new tax on high-end homes and a groundbreaking plan to charge motorists to drive into Manhattan’s busiest stretches.

The budget deal was immediately hailed as “transformative” by Mr. Cuomo, and it will clearly have an impact felt far beyond taxpayers’ wallets. The agreement included deals that will likely change the way millions of New Yorkers shop, commute and vote: bans on plastic bags from retail stores, billions in new funds for New York’s troubled subway system and a new paid three-hour break on Election Day.

The budget’s progressive theme was a victory for Mr. Cuomo and the newly elected Democratic majority in the State Legislature, most notably Democrats who helped give the party control of the State Senate for the first time in a decade. They largely lived up to pledges to address big money in politics, raise taxes on the wealthy and overhaul a criminal justice system that disproportionately targets minority communities.

But the deal announced in the wee hours of Sunday morning also showed the limits of those 
campaign promises. Activists criticized a plan to empower small campaign donors as halfhearted. A measure to tax luxury homes was refashioned at the last minute after the powerful real-estate industry intervened. And, perhaps most significant, hopes for legalizing the recreational use of marijuana were dashed, though lawmakers could still approve that later in the legislative session.

Still, for veteran observers of Albany, the sheer variety of issues settled since January — from infrastructure to the environment, from voting rights to transgender rights — was a relief from years of divided government, when interests of Republicans in the Senate often stood in contrast to the state’s overwhelmingly Democratic electorate.

“The process seems very similar,” said Blair Horner, the executive director of the New York Public Interest Research Group, and a former aide to Mr. Cuomo. “But the product is obviously very different because you have a new majority in the Senate.”

Most of the deals announced on Sunday were largely made behind closed doors, and left to the 11th hour: Voting was likely to push right up to, and perhaps past, the midnight deadline.

Chief among the new policies was congestion pricing, which is likely to affect the habits of anyone who works or plays in Manhattan. Under the plan, the first of its type in the nation, vehicles traveling below 60th Street will be subject to a toll, revenue that will be funneled into the city’s beleaguered subways and other regional transportation needs.


Another saw a proposed pied-à-terre tax, an annual recurring tax on second homes that were valued at $5 million or more, eliminated. Although the tax had the backing of state leaders, it evaporated under pressure from real estate interests and legal concerns.

In its place, lawmakers and Mr. Cuomo agreed to a “mansion tax” coupled with a real estate transfer tax, two one-time levies that would be charged at the point of sale on multimillion-dollar homes. The tax rate would top out at 4.15 percent on the sale of properties worth $25 million or more.

A plan to ban plastic bags in the state was also included in the budget, but it makes a fee on paper bags optional, which some environmentalists worry will lessen the popularity of reusable bags. New York would be the second state, after California, to ban plastic bags. (Hawaii also effectively has a ban in place, since all the state’s counties bar such single-use bags.)

New York Post

 Gov. Cuomo just scored a 40 percent pay hike — and it’s not even the Legislature’s biggest gift to him in the new budget.
 
The late-night vote to increase the gov’s compensation — making New York’s chief executive the nation’s highest-paid — was just icing on a very fatty cake:
 
A six-member Traffic Mobility Review Board will fill in all the devilish details on the new tolls for driving in Manhattan below 60th Street — and it’s clear that Cuomo will dominate that panel while preserving his deniability.
 
 The Cuomo-controlled MTA board will get final say over the tolls, as well as how the revenues are used, new MTA Chairman Pat Foye announced. That guarantees the gov will get his way.
 
New rules boost Cuomo’s power by making it easier to replace MTA board members.
 
Mayor de Blasio and the City Council thus wind up with zero power over the new tolls in the town they supposedly run — and no say in how those funds, or the take from new “mansion taxes,” get spent. Yet these are all revenue sources that city agencies, not state ones, should control.
 
The gov also won the ability to remove unruly members from the state’s Public Authorities Control Board — further increasing his power over millions in state grants.
 A new commission will draw up the framework for public financing of state campaigns. Bet that Cuomo will either call the shots, or see that the whole thing blows up if he doesn’t like the results.

With the passage of this budget, Albany has created a gubernatorial monster.

Commission created to study plastic bag use

From NY1:

Governor Andrew Cuomo is revisiting the idea of a fee on plastic grocery bags with a new task force.

The commission will study the issue for a year and then come up with recommendations for reducing the use of plastic bags.

If you can't tax them, ban them

From the Daily News:

Mayor de Blasio said he's "very open" to banning plastic bags outright after the state legislature and Gov. Cuomo blocked a city law to impose a five cent fee on the bags.

Albany intervened to stop the city for at least a year from requiring stores to charge five cents for plastic and paper bags. City pols say they wanted to encourage shoppers to ditch the environmentally harmful bags for reusable ones.

"That was one way of doing it. A ban is another option, which I'd be very open to," de Blasio said Monday night on NY1. "The one thing I know is the worst possible outcome is what we have right now. Vast number of plastic bags are just harming the earth. It's not good for any of us."

Bag tax coming back

From the Queens Chronicle:

One of the hottest stories last spring was the City Council’s close and contentious vote to charge customers five cents for almost every paper or plastic grocery bag they use while food shopping.

Originally set to be implemented last October, the fee was pushed back to Feb. 15 when the state Legislature threatened to ban such fees. The issue faded into obscurity under things like the presidential election.

That could change once the new session of the state Legislature goes into high gear in the coming weeks.

Three state senators from Queens — all of whom opposed the Council measure — told the Chronicle that Albany could well be reviving the bag bill ban.

Bag tax coming soon

From Crains:

On Thursday, City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito backed an effort to reduce plastic bag use and waste.

Councilman Brad Lander, D-Brooklyn, championed the legislation, which will charge a nickel for each plastic or paper bag New Yorkers use at supermarkets and shops. The fee is meant to encourage shoppers to bring reusable bags to stores instead of taking plastic ones.

The city spends more than $12 million a year dumping 91,000 pounds of plastic bags in landfills, according to the council. Lander had already amassed majority support for the bill, but it could be the tightest vote of the council's legislative season, he told Crain's.

Opponents of the bill say its yet another tax on city residents and burdens the poor. The proposed fee was reduced to 5 cents from 10 cents to address such concerns.

Mark-Viverito's support for the bill guarantees its passage next week by the City Council.