NJ senator looking to amend bag ban law to help online grocery shoppers

MARLTON, New Jersey (WPVI) — We’re about 4 months into New Jersey’s new bag ban.

Some individuals like it, together with Ginnie Keiser of Sweetwater, NJ.

“I believe it is nice that we’re not throwing away a bunch of plastic into the oceans once more,” stated Keiser.

However many have struggled to adapt to bringing their very own baggage to the grocery retailer.

“I simply actually neglect,” stated Simone Stewart of Marlton. “Though everybody has them and so they’re there, typically I’m going again to the automobile and get them.”

One of many predominant gripes concerning the legislation that did away with paper and plastic baggage at grocery shops bigger than 2,500 sq. toes: many on-line grocery orders now include a brand new set of reusable baggage. Each order.

“We have had prospects are available with stacks of luggage 30, 40 deep like, ‘Right here are you able to please reuse these?’ And we will not,” stated Chris Mentzer, director of operations at Rastelli Market Contemporary in Marlton.

He says for sanitary causes, as soon as a reusable bag is in somebody’s house, they cannot settle for it again into the shop.

Mentzer wish to see paper baggage allowed for on-line orders.

“I actually assume they need to check out house purchasing as a result of it isn’t cost-effective for us as a retailer and it is simply not handy for the precise client at house,” stated Mentzer.

Senator Bob Smith, a Democrat representing New Jersey’s seventeenth District, sponsored the bag ban laws.

On Tuesday he instructed Motion Information he is engaged on introducing a brand new invoice that will amend the legislation, specializing in choices for on-line grocery orders, together with utilizing cardboard bins or requiring shops to take again reusable baggage.

“After which the third approach is possibly paper baggage. As a result of we’re saving a lot on the grocery retailer aspect of it by way of producing waste that this could be a fast and straightforward repair,” stated Smith.

A spokesperson for the New Jersey Division of Environmental Safety stated Tuesday in an announcement: “Whereas curbside and supply providers have expanded considerably between passage and implementation of the legislation, the Division intends to work with stakeholders and thru the Plastics Advisory Council to seek out revolutionary ways in which would promote the reusability of those baggage.”

One other thought when you’ve got a pile of reusable baggage sitting at house: native meals banks might have them.

Meals banks in New Jersey have till November 4 to modify to reusable baggage.

The Meals Financial institution of South Jersey is taking donations of recent or like new reusable baggage.