WASHINGTON “Paper or plastic?” is no longer the question most often on store clerks’ lips in the nation’s capital these days when shoppers are buying food. Instead, cashiers here routinely ask customers if they want a bag at all, since they have to pay a nickel for each disposable sack they use to hold their groceries, snacks or takeout meals.
For many shoppers in the District of Columbia, the nickel fee has been an impetus to cut back on previously free store bags that all too often wind up in the trash – or littering nearby streams and trees.
While Baltimore’s City Council is debating whether to levy a stiff fee of 25 cents on each plastic or paper bag – or to ban plastic entirely – the district has gotten its residents’ attention, it seems, with a fee that might seem trivial to most shoppers. The measure’s chief sponsor says food retailers say they’re selling roughly 50 percent fewer plastic and paper bags than they used to give away before the fee took effect Jan. 1.
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