Plastic Bags Are Target Of Council

A bill to require plastic bag recycling in many stores would reduce pollution and litter by encouraging better recycling habits among consumers, City Council backers say.

If passed, the bill would require stores of more than 5,000 square feet to provide recycling for plastic bags, to sell reusable bags to customers, and to report the weight of their recycled bags to city government. It would impose fines of $2,000 a day on stores that failed to comply. City officials estimate that at least 700 food stores would be affected, in addition to other stores that meet the bill's size requirement.

"If we really want to get serious about improving our environment, we need to look at major sources of nonbiodegradable waste," Council Speaker Christine Quinn said yesterday.

Other council members touted the proposal's environmental benefits. "It's going to save the lives of animals choked by plastic bags," Council Member Peter Vallone Jr., said. "It's going to reduce our use of oil that we use when we create plastic bags. It's going to just clean up much of the mess that we make."

The city's public advocate, Betsy Gotbaum, said the bill would "keep our streets clean, protect our environment, and save New York taxpayers money."

A lobbyist for the Neighborhood Retail Alliance, Richard Lipsky, criticized the bill yesterday as ineffective. "What we have here is a program that has no incentive for the consumer to bring the bags back," he said.

While the bill would not reward or penalize consumers for recycling bags, it mandates that plastic bags at affected stores contain a message reading "Please return this bag to a participating store for recycling," and that stores place their recycling bins conveniently near their entrance. Ms. Quinn said a goal of the bill was "training New Yorkers that what you get can't just be thrown into the garbage without some type of impact on our environment."

Mr. Lipsky called the plan "a death by slow water torture" that would burden businesses with extra costs. He questioned whether it was "a deposit wolf in sheep's clothing" that would lead to tougher recycling laws similar to those for bottles.

"This is not the deposit requirement," Ms. Quinn said of the bill. "We don't think it would make sense to work with something that's free, like a plastic bag, as opposed to a bottle or something which you're purchasing."

She minimized the impact of the bill on businesses. "This is not something that's going to end up costing stores any kind of significant money," Ms. Quinn said.

Some other states and municipal governments have required plastic bag recycling at stores. California state law requires large retailers to provide in-store recycling for plastic bags, similar to the council's proposal. San Francisco's city government goes further, outlawing plastic bags at large chain supermarkets and pharmacies.