Derek Norman

A store employee helped her stuff paper towels into a worn, white plastic bag from Target that she had brought from home.

“I always carry extra plastic bags and never throw them away or waste any,” Smith said. “I understand that they do harm to the environment, but these ‘single-use’ bags can be used a lot.”

Her reaction, and many like it, came after New York lawmakers agreed last week to impose a statewide ban on single-use plastic bags from most retail sales. The plan was included in the state’s $175 billion budget that was announced early Sunday.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo first proposed the ban, which could begin as early as next March 2020, a year ago. New York is now the second state to impose such a rule; California banned plastic bags in 2016. Hawaii effectively has a statewide ban since all counties in the state bar the use of plastic bags.

New York’s ban allows for several exceptions, such as wrapped deli;meat, restaurant takeout bags; and plastic garbage bags. The bill also allows counties to charge an optional 5-cent fee for customers who want brown paper bags, which has caused environmentalists to worry that reusable bags would become a less popular option.

Still, many city residents in lower-income neighborhoods, while appreciative of the environmental considerations, appeared wary about how the ban would impact their daily routines. One frequent question: Who would really bear the brunt of the legislation?

To save money, many people said their families reused plastic bags as trash or recycling bags, or used them to bring lunch to work.

“I know this neighborhood is going through a change, but there’s still a lot of people here who can’t afford to take on more, and it’s a luxury to have the choice,” said Smith, who has lived in East Harlem for more than 60 years.

“Sometimes politicians mean well,” she added. “But unless they live in this type of community, they wouldn’t know how a change like this could feel.”

In January 2018, Suffolk County on Long Island began charging shoppers 5 cents per plastic bag, and usage dropped. In the first year of the added fee, grocery stores reported an 80 percent decrease in the distribution of single-use bags.

Residents were forced to change their habits. Will city residents adjust as easily?

On the Lower East Side, Tony Strong, 51, stood against a fence in front of the La Guardia Houses, chatting with a friend, with two carts packed with bagged items and extra plastic bags beside them.

“We like to keep our plastic bags in our cubby cabinet, and when we need to carry something, we reuse them,” he said as he pulled several used plastic bags out of his hand cart.

“I actually think they should keep them,” he said of the state’s ban. “But our government sometimes just doesn’t give us the choice. They do it, and we just have to adjust.”

A manager of a bodega above the Kingston Avenue subway station in Brooklyn said using less plastic would be better for the city and that the store even tried selling reusable totes in the past, to no avail.

One resident of Manhattan’s Chinatown said she loved the ban, but predicted that her neighborhood would have a difficult time adjusting. Plastic bags, she said, are so prevalent in Chinatown that they were almost iconic.

Michael King, 44, wheeled a shopping cart out of a Foodtown grocery store in Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn and then, one by one, lifted several plastic bags with the handles wrapped tightly around his fingers — three bags to a hand.

King thought the plan seemed designed to “change grocery shopping culture” by steering it to online grocers.

“You’re actually dictating how I shop if I have to bring a bag with me,” King said. “See me, I’ve got one, two, three — five, six bags. So you’re telling me I have to leave my house with 20 bags if it’s Thanksgiving time?”

The only beneficiaries, King said, would be big web-based retail delivery services like Amazon and FreshDirect. “They’re ready,” he said.

A fruit vendor on the Upper East Side, who supports the ban, said plastic bags should have been banned years ago. New Yorkers, he said, have become overly reliant on them.

“It’s embedded in them psychologically,” said Erdal Ozcan, 30, who lives in New Jersey but sets up his fruit stand on the corner of 86th Street and Second Avenue. “One box of blueberries, they want one bag. One cherry tomato, boom, one bag.

“People in this city might be upset for the first month, but hey, it’s the rules and they’ll get used to it,” he added, instinctively yanking a plastic white bag off a hook each time a customer purchased an item. “Yeah, the people here won’t like it, but who cares? It’s not for the people. It’s for the future, for the environment.”

Many New Yorkers understood that the bill was intended to improve environmental sustainability.

On 125th Street in Harlem, Nana Yaw, a 57-year-old sidewalk vendor from Ghana, was setting up his table with African jewelry, trinkets and statuettes. Yaw said in order to be more environmentally conscious, he has used paper bags for years.

“It’s important for the vendors to be into this, too — that’s how this part of the industry will change,” he said. “And as for the customers, as long as you give them something to carry their things, they will take it.”

This article originally appeared in <a id="f0aaf547-e28a-4882-a66d-5d4c550f71eb" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/31/nyregion/plastic-bag-ban-new-york.html">The New York Times</a>.

New Yorkers Who Reuse Plastic Bags Bemoan Ban

NEW YORK — Francis Smith, an 83-year-old resident of East Harlem, stood at the end of a checkout counter at a local supermarket Saturday, pulled out several plastic bags from her hand cart and began bagging her items.

New Yorkers who reuse plastic bags bemoan ban

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Derek Norman

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New Yorkers who reuse plastic bags bemoan ban