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Bloomberg
New Jersey is the first state to ban both plastic and paper bags, leaving companies and shoppers to find creative workarounds to get their groceries home.
ShopRite, with more than 100 New Jersey stores, will charge a flat $1.50 per order for reusable bags. Instacart Inc, which fulfills shoppers’ lists for Aldi Inc, Lidl Ltd, CVS Health Corp and others, said it will charge a flat bag fee, but didn’t specify the cost.
Amazon.com Inc’s Whole Foods Markets Inc — which dropped plastic bags nationally more than a decade ago — will pack those orders in reusable bags, for which it is “not currently charging any additional fees,†the company said. The Wawa convenience-store chain will give away 1,000 reusable bags at each of its 272 New Jersey locations starting soon.
Governor Phil Murphy, a
Democrat who took office in 2018, pledged to make an
environmental leader of New Jersey, the most densely populated US state and the nation’s top location for toxic Superfund sites, with 113. The law he signed in November 2020 restricts most grocery and other stores from giving away or even selling paper or plastic single-use bags.
No other US state has banned paper bags, though some require recycled content or per-bag consumer fees of a few cents, at times channeled to pollution-control programs.
New Jersey may not be alone for long: Some studies have shown that paper, though easily recycled, can sap more energy and raw materials than plastic. Reusable bags, too, have
drawbacks, as cotton versions are soil-, fertiliser-, and manufacturing-intensive, and synthetic types often rely on fossil fuels.
The 100 billion plastic bags used in the US each year require 12 million gallons of oil to
manufacture, according to EarthDay.org, a Washington-based non-profit environmental group.
Days before the ban, some New Jersey grocery stores had empty plastic-bag holders at checkout lines and signs warning customers of the upcoming change. “Please bring a receptacle for your vehicle if you would like your items contained,†one sign read.
Target is “transitioning to a bag-free experience†in its 48 New Jersey stores, encouraging shoppers to bring their own
or buy reusables, said spokeswoman Liz Hancock.