海角大神

New York City聽grocery聽shoppers may soon face a 10-cent fee on all plastic and paper聽bags, enlisting the nation's largest city in a growing green movement.

The City Council introduced a bill Wednesday that would impose the fee in an effort to spur customers to bring their own reusable聽bags. Supporters of the bill say it would benefit the city's economy as well as its environment.

"The聽bags聽get stuck in storms drains, they cause flooding and they litter our beaches," Councilwoman Margaret Chin of Manhattan, one of the co-sponsors of the legislation, said at a news conference on the City Hall steps. "And they cost New York City a lot of money."

City residents use 5.2 billion disposable plastic聽bags聽a year and it costs the city $10 million annually to ship used聽bags聽to landfills, according to the bills' supporters.

The measure is expected to be voted upon within the next few weeks. If it passes, New York will join such cities as Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington to try to curb the use of plastic聽bags.

"Plastic聽bags聽are not central to our life happiness or health but make an enormous impact on our world," said Lilly Belanger of the environmental advocacy group the No Impact Project. "With this simple step, we can be a model for rest of country."

As if to underscore their words, a plastic聽bag聽then blew above the news conference, drawing jeers from the crowd.

The 10-cent fee would not be a tax. Instead, the money raised from the聽bag聽sales would benefit the store owners who supplied the聽bags.

Though聽grocery聽stores supply the vast majority of the disposable聽bags聽used across the city, the fee would also apply to聽bags聽sold at other retail stores. It would not apply to restaurant deliveries or most street food carts. The fee would also not be charged to shoppers who use public-assistance programs to buy food.

Councilman Brad Lander said the fee also applied to paper聽bags聽not because the bill was intended as a method to raising revenue, but as an incentive for customers to opt for reusable聽bags.

"Plastic is worse than paper, but it's best is if people bring their own聽bags," said Lander.

Some business owners have complained that the fee could keep shoppers away. A similar measure was introduced last summer but failed to gather the necessary support and therefore had to be re-introduced in front of the new council, which took office in January. Nineteen councilmembers are co-sponsoring the new bill, seven short of the votes needed to pass it.

Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito said Wednesday that she would need to review the bill before determining her position. Her close ally, Mayor Bill de Blasio, stopped short of endorsing the bill a day earlier but said that reducing the number of plastic聽bags聽was "a societal goal."

"The plastic聽bags聽are a problem, and our goal has to be to reduce the use of plastic聽bags," de Blasio said.