Boro Park Stores Grapple With New World of No Plastic Bags

Feb 29 2020
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2:28 PM
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By Yochonon Donn

Boro Park – Plastic bags are off limits but may be sold as regular items. Paper bags are only permitted for a fee. But wait, food stamps and WIC customers are exempt from the paper bag fee but not the plastic bag ban. And stores that sell raw food are exempt from both.

Confused? So are most of the storeowners in Boro Park who spoke to a roving reporter from boropark24.com about the New York state law that goes into effect midnight Motzei Shabbos.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen. I’m confused,” conceded the owner of Yidel’s Shopping Cart on the corner of New Utrecht Ave. and 50th Street. He sells groceries, for which plastic bags are banned from use, but he also sells fruits, vegetables and raw meat, which are permitted.

“It’s a huge confusion. Nobody knows what they’re going to do,” Yidel said. “We’re allowed to charge five cents for paper bags, but paper bags itself costs me more than five cents.”

Several storeowners said they expect mass confusion in the beginning as Boro Park’s families, which tend to be larger and younger than the state’s overall, get used to the law that passed the legislature last year.

Customers will likely bring their own bags, and some will request a delivery for orders that they normally would carry home themselves. Some stores said they are ordering smaller boxes to use for deliveries. Many stores are beginning to sell a sealed container of plastic bags as they would any other item. One container that was seen in two stores had ten bags in it and was being sold for fifty cents.

The uncertainty and lack of communication by the state, however, is causing a lot of confusion.

Less than a week before the regulations go into effect, Asher Weber of Weber’s Meats at 12th Ave. and 52nd Street has yet to hear from the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation what he is expected to do. He thinks he will have no issue with plastic bags since stores that sell raw meat and fish are exempt. But he is unsure. “We’ll see how it works out,” he said.

“The ban is a problem, it confuses people,” said Yanky Goldstein, the manager of KRM Supermarket on 39th Street, between 13th and 14th avenues. “Nobody knows what’s going to happen and how they will be taking home their purchases.”

Food stamps and WIC are exempt from the five-cent fee on paper bags. Goldstein estimates that this will cause some of the smaller mom and pop stores to switch to paper bags for milk, eggs and bread. But the larger supermarkets which have overtaken Boro Park’s market in recent years won’t.

“There will be chaos until customers figure out how the system will work,” Goldstein said. “But we’ll get used to it because there’s no other choice.”

One customer at KRM thought that the ban on bags was such a good idea that it will lead to an economic boom in Boro Park.

“First of all the stores will be able to earn an extra five cents on the paper bags,” the man said. “And the city will also have more money to make Boro Park prettier. I see that since the ban on foam cups went into effect there is a lot less garbage. People learned to use the glass cups like they give out at chasunas. They’ll get used to this also.”

Simcha Friedman, the manager of Super-13 Supermarket, took the other view, saying that the progressive politicians who designed the law did not fully think through its ramifications.

“I understand that some people think that by cutting down on plastic bags you’re saving the environment and the earth. But this is not the way how you do it,” Freidman said. “Learn from the Europeans and the Israelis, who let you have bags but they charge you for it. People then automatically cut down on bags because they don’t want to be charged. Not like over here where they ban it completely.”

“As a longtime Boro Park storeowner,” he added, “I don’t think it will work in the heimishe market. It’s not in our DNA. The people who came up with this law did not think things through.”

Morris of Custom Shirts uses paper bags to pack his shirts, which he says costs over a dollar each. But Mr. Morris has already purchased several canvas bags for his own use when he goes shopping.

Mattis Roth, a Boro Park pedestrian, nearly gave away his age with his insights into the bag ban.

“People don’t realize,” Roth said, “that in the 1970s, every household had shopping carts. There were no plastic bags, no adding machines. People put their items in the carts and the order was added up by pencil on paper. When they come home they took out the order and put it on the table to count to make sure that the bill was correct.”

“This used to be part of our school homework,” Roth added, “if we could double check the grocery order.”

Photos by: Hershy Rubenstein