Here’s where you can stuff your plastic-bag ban.
New Yorkers were forced to begin grappling with a new shopping reality Sunday as the state’s ban on plastic shopping bags kicked in — and not many people were happy about it.
“I think it’s ridiculous,” letter-carrier Scott Kimmel, 56, said while shopping at the Whitestone Target in College Point, Queens. “I understand about ‘conserve, take care of the environment,’ but c’mon!”
About half the shoppers seen by The Post on the first day of the bag ban, including Kimmel, were compensating by bringing their own bags from home, while another quarter opted to just go bagless rather than pay the 5-cent paper-bag fee allowed under the law, and the remaining 25 percent coughed up the nickel charge per bag.
“I was totally shocked,” Target shopper Richie Alvarez, 49, said of the move. “This is what our world is coming to. Yeah, they charged me extra for the bag. That’s why I only took one. It would normally be two or three bags.”
The law, passed by state lawmakers last year, bars single-use plastic bags at any retailer — from supermarkets to bodegas — that collects sales tax at their store.
It allows shoppers to bring bags from home, buy a reusable bag at the store, or pay the 5-cent fee for paper bags.
Although it went into effect Sunday, state officials said they won’t bring the hammer down on retailers who ignore the law until April, when fines could start to kick in.
“People don’t want to hear this,” said the manager of C-Town Supermarket on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, who only identified himself as Henry. “They’re not happy. At least I have a month to break them in. We’re trying to get cheap mesh bags for them. We’ll see.”
Smaller retailers, including the Food Bazaar Supermarket in Woodside, opted to ease into the new world of plastic-less retail by pushing their remaining supply before tapping new stacks of brown paper bags.
“This is it!” the store’s manager said. “We have enough for one, maybe two days. These are the last, then no more. You can’t order, no one has more.”
At the Brooklyn Fair supermarket in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, some shoppers were so ticked off that they blindly lashed out Mayor Bill de Blasio, who supports the ban but in reality did not pass it — the state did.
“This is nonsense,” said Constance Tripoli, 53. “I ain’t got no SUV like the mayor to take my groceries home. I told them I needed bags, and they snuck me a few.”
The city took to Twitter to bid farewell to plastic bags with a post of a colorful “Buh Bye” message spelled out with them.
“Plastic bags are officially banned,” the city’s post said. “Together, we can create a cleaner future for our city and planet.”