NYC Plastic Bag Fee Postponed Until 2017

Weeks after Albany lawmakers threatened to prohibit New York (and other cities) from imposing a plastic bag fee, the City Council has voted to postpone its proposed 5-cent fee on plastic bags until February.

In May, Council Members had voted to enact fees beginning October 1st, passing a measure that wourld require stores to charge a nickel for each plastic and paper non-reusable bag. Supporters of the "bag tax" claimed it would reduce the city's annual plastic bag usage by 60 percent, cutting down on the roughly $12.5 million of public sanitation money used each year to dispose of wasted bags and curtailing their destruction of the Earth's oceans, atmosphere, and wildlife.

But all of that green goodwill ran up against Albany Democratic Senator Simcha Felder, who threatened state legislation that would make plastic bag fees illegal throughout New York. Felder, whose district comprises much of Brooklyn's Borough Park and Midwood neighborhoods, hawed to the Wall Street Journal that “New Yorkers do not like being manipulated, they do not like being aggravated and they do not need government to irritate them.”