New York City tax on plastic bags bill have been put forward for many years. The bill require the store to provide customers with the right to charge at least 10 cents of a takeaway bag. The bill foreign selling bags is defined to include paper bags and plastic bags. Business fit the bill include ordinary street vendors, green car, such as pharmacies, grocery stores, supermarkets, convenience food store wholesale shop. But moving street vendors, retail shops alcohol, to provide emergency food at the emergency food provides, restaurants excluded.
Two main sponsor of the bill mentioned that the positive impact of the introduction of the bill on the streets of garbage reduction, reducing the use of the plastic bags, and garbage collection costs brought on.
Plastic bags decompose in landfill needs 500-1000 years, but plastic is not biodegradable, and will become small which can’t be absorbed by soil nutrients. Health Bureau will spend $ 10 million a year of taxpayers’ money, garbage transported by truck to a landfill, but many still called garbage.
Plastic bags are blown on the streets, hanging from a tree. When the rain set them rushed to the pool, but also blocked the river, polluting nearby waters, threatening marine life, because they can be mistaken for a plastic bag to eat.
Opponents argued that the tax does not solve the fundamental problem. It is more important to solve plastics recycling and disposable from the source. It was suggested that recycled plastic should be extracted profits from the plastic out plastic bottles we drink, cosmetics boxes are plastic. Most people who go to the grocery store to buy things are not wealthy, and they have to spend extra money each month.
Therefore, the city government should pay for the cost of recyclable bags instead shift the burden to the public.