Plastic grocery bags offer convenience in getting purchases home, but can become a problem later, littering our trees and waterways. Finding a solution has not been easy. Gary Miller/

Supporters say the 5-cent fee would have curbed the tons of plastic bags found in New Jersey and New York waterways.


Efforts to keep plastic bags from polluting the region’s waterways took a significant step back late Tuesday when New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo blocked New York City’s 5-cent bag fee just hours before it was to take effect.

The move affects New Jersey because grocery bags and other thin films make up about 20 percent of the plastic garbage found in the rivers and streams in the two states' shared watershed, according to a study last year by NY/NJ Baykeeper.

New York City’s fee and a similar one proposed for New Jersey have faced significant opposition from plastics manufacturers. Plastic grocery bags have become so synonymous with litter that they have been banned in several U.S. cities, California and Hawaii, and China and India, among other countries.

NEW JERSEY: Efforts to curb plastic bag litter face major opposition

But Cuomo called the fee "deeply flawed" because store owners would be allowed to keep the estimated $100 million raised annually by the fee instead of the state using it to fund environmental programs. He signed a law that overturns New York City’s fee, which was to have begun Wednesday. Cuomo, who has a long-standing feud with New York Mayor City Bill de Blasio, instead announced a task force to report on the effectsof plastic bags statewide by the end of the year.

"It's certainly a setback, but we're taking him at his word to look at this, and we're moving forward to get this implemented in New Jersey and elsewhere," said Debbie Mans, executive director of NY/NJ Baykeeper. "We share a lot of waters so there really needs to be a regional solution."

Bills to impose a nickel fee in New Jersey have stalled in Trenton after being introduced in the spring of 2016 by a group of mostly Bergen County Democratic legislators. The original bills called for a ban on plastic bags by 2025. That language was deleted by an Assembly committee.

In New York, the American Progressive Bag Alliance has lobbied Albany lawmakers in recent months to repeal the New York City fee before it takes effect. Many of those lawmakers echoed a plastics industry argument saying the fee would hurt poor and working-class residents, although food stamp users would not be charged.

The alliance, made up of plastic manufacturers and trade groups,​ have not yet lobbied against the New Jersey bills, a spokesman said. A review of New Jersey lobbying records shows others, like Wal-Mart and the New Jersey Business and Industry Association, have opposed it.

Since supermarkets began phasing them in three decades ago, thin plastic bags have been a cheap and convenient way to haul groceries. At one time they were even considered an environmentally friendly replacement to the ubiquitous brown paper bag.

Instead they have become the poster child for everyday litter, thanks to their ability to be picked up by the wind and scattered everywhere. Made of a petroleum-based polymer, the bags can take decades, if not centuries, to break down to smaller pieces.

Environmentalists say they will still encourage shoppers to take their own reusable bags to the supermarket, but admit that the fee would have been a strong deterrent against plastic.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Read or Share this story: