{"id":421904,"date":"2010-03-12T10:13:38","date_gmt":"2010-03-12T15:13:38","guid":{"rendered":"tag:consumerist.com,2010:\/\/1.10003175"},"modified":"2010-03-12T01:35:40","modified_gmt":"2010-03-12T06:35:40","slug":"d-c-has-customers-pay-for-grocery-bags-law-cuts-down-on-waste","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/421904","title":{"rendered":"D.C. Has Customers Pay For Grocery Bags, Law Cuts Down On Waste"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/consumerist.com\/assets_c\/2010\/03\/bag-thumb-158x105-38056.jpg\">         <\/p>\n<p>A Washington, D.C. law mandates shoppers <a href=\"http:\/\/articles.baltimoresun.com\/2010-02-27\/features\/bal-md.gr.bag27feb27_1_bags-paper-or-plastic-nickel-fee\">shell out a nickel for each grocery bag<\/a> they use, and the regulation has caused people to stop taking as many unnecessary bags and reduced waste, the Baltimore Sun reports. <\/p>\n<p>Impressed, Baltimore&#8217;s city council is considering charging a quarter a bag. The trend seems to be catching on nationwide. From the Sun story:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Washington is the first major U.S. city to go through with a fee on disposable bags for food. Seattle adopted a 20 cent fee, only to have voters repeal it in a referendum. San Francisco is the only major municipality to have banned plastic merchandise bags, although they&#8217;re also outlawed on the Outer Banks of North Carolina.<\/p>\n<p>Government fees or restrictions on disposable bags have had a tough time taking hold. Plastic bag manufacturers and anti-tax activists, among others, say that litter should be tackled through voluntary recycling. And bag fees, opponents contend, are ill-disguised revenue grabs that hurt the poor by making them pay more for groceries and food.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>You could argue the laws work as regressive taxes that stick it harder to the poor, but it&#8217;s tough to dispute the environmental impact of the results.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/articles.baltimoresun.com\/2010-02-27\/features\/bal-md.gr.bag27feb27_1_bags-paper-or-plastic-nickel-fee\">Nickel fee on bags cutting use in Washington<\/a> [Baltimore Sun]<br \/>\n<i>(Thanks, William!)<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Washington, D.C. law mandates shoppers shell out a nickel for each grocery bag they use, and the regulation has caused people to stop taking as many unnecessary bags and reduced waste, the Baltimore Sun reports. Impressed, Baltimore&#8217;s city council is considering charging a quarter a bag. The trend seems to be catching on nationwide. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4514,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-421904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4514"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=421904"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421904\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=421904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=421904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=421904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}