Coker wants to charge for plastic bags
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- November
- 7
The Rockland County Legislature’s Environmental Committee will hold a public hearing on a proposal to a 25-cent fee for paper or plastic carryout bags at 7:30 p.m. Dec. 10 in the legislature’s chambers in the Allison-Parris County Office Building, 11 New Hempstead Road in New City.
Legislator Connie Coker, D-South Nyack, who chairs the committee, worked with Andy Stewart, the executive director of Keep Rockland Beautiful, and wrote legislation that to charge the carryout bag fee.
In a news release, Coker said today that paper and plastic bags threaten the environment, are a source of significant litter, and contribute to overburdened landfill sites. She said the legislation would discourage the use of these bags while encouraging the use of environmentally friendly reusable bags.
Coker has also expressed her support for New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s proposal to charge city shoppers a fee for every plastic bag they receive when checking out at the supermarket.
“While I hope that New York City ultimately passes Mayor Bloomberg’s proposal and I am certainly eager to pass similar legislation in Rockland County, I believe that this issue would be more effectively addressed on a statewide level,” Coker said today.
“Until such time as a statewide law is put into place, each municipality throughout New York State should take steps to discourage the use of plastic and paper carryout bags and promote reusable shopping bags,” Coker said.
This entry was posted
on Friday, November 7th, 2008 at 4:12 pm by Laura Incalcaterra. 
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Category: Andy Stewart, Connie Coker, Keep Rockland Beautiful
Laura, as you correctly point out, the primary purpose of this proposal is to create an incentive for folks to use re-usable bags when shopping, because this would yield various major environmental and financial benefits. It is really important NOT to fall into the old “paper vs plastic” debate, since each has its pros and cons. I cannot, for the life of me, understand why there are so many efforts across the county to reduce plastic bag use, even ban them at checkout counters, while leaving paper bags unaddressed. Our goal is to reduce the use of disposable carryout bags of all types.
Andy
This proposal amounts to a penalty for disposable bag use, NOT an incentive. How about crediting each customer 25 cents a bag for each reusable bag they bring to the grocery store and use. And what about the plastic and paper “designer bags” department and specialty stores use? Perhaps these companies should be encouraged to dispense (freely or at a small price) reusable “designer cloth” eco-friendly bags. The stores would benefit from the logo advertising from repeated use of their bags and the environment would benefit as well.