The state Assembly is slated to consider and potentially vote on a controversial bill that would prohibit businesses in the state from giving out single-use plastic and paper bags, straws and Styrofoam, after the proposal was eclipsed by the pandemic for more than six months.
Environmentalists hail the proposal – Senate Bill 864 – which they argue is crucial to curbing pollution and boosting public health. Business groups have cried foul, arguing that the alternative is too costly for employers and customers.
The measure was approved Thursday morning by the Assembly Appropriations Committee.
Starting 18 months after the bill is signed, businesses – such as restaurants and grocery stores – are prohibited from giving out polystyrene, and plastic and paper bags. Beginning a year after the bill is signed, straws could only be given to customers who request them.
The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection could grant a one-year waiver to the Styrofoam ban if the business has no “feasible and commercially available alternative,” or if they make less than $500,000 in yearly gross income.
It calls for allocating $500,000 to the NJDEP for a program to provide free, reusable bags throughout the state.
A first-time offense will be met with a warning, followed by a $1,000 fine for the second offense and $5,000 for any offense after that. Under the bill, the state would create a Plastics Advisory Council within the NJDEP to gauge the effectiveness of the new restrictions.
“The health and safety of future generations depend on the choices we make today. Single-use plastic products are one of the single greatest threats to our oceans, environment, and health,” the bill’s lower house sponsor, Assembly Environment Chair Nancy Pinkin, D-18th District, said Thursday in a statement.
The largest increase in state and local government spending “would likely result from the provision of the bill that requires food service businesses, including those operated by or on behalf of the State or local governments—such as cafeterias in schools, hospitals, and prisons—to cease using polystyrene foam foodservice products,” according to a Sept. 10 report from the non-partisan Office of Legislative Services
Meanwhile, the state health department would likely have to shell out additional money to ensure businesses are complying with the new plastic straw requirement.
The NJDEP would likely have to spend an additional $800,000 a year on seven new staff members to handle the ensuing enforcement workload, the OLS note adds.
Committee Chair Sen. Bob Smith during a 2019 meeting of the Senate Select Committee on Economic Growth Strategies. – AARON HOUSTON
The bill passed the state Senate in early March, and then the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the state, forcing most New Jerseyans to shelter-in-place and avoid in-person interaction. If it passes the full Assembly, it heads to Gov. Phil Murphy’s desk, where he would sign it, reject it, or send it back to lawmakers for revision.
“We’ve been dealing with COVID since February,” the bill’s upper house sponsor, Senate Environment Chair Bob Smith, D-17th District, said in an interview. “First things first, we’ve got to deal with the public health emergency and we’re still dealing with it … The bill’s in great shape.”
As talks picked up over summer 2018 about the prospect of a statewide restriction on the sale and distribution of plastic bags, many local governments began enacting their own ordinances. But, at the start of the pandemic, towns and cities in New Jersey, such as Highland Park, began to temporarily lift those restrictions.
During 2018 and 2019, the bill lurched forward in fits and starts, with lawmakers and the governor’s office at odds over a timeline for when bans should go into effect, whether they should cover paper bags or just levy a fee on them, what could define a bag as reusable versus single-use, and what businesses should be exempt.
