Two months away: NJ bans single-use plastic, paper bags at supermarkets. Less plastic at other retailers.

In two months, some New Jersey supermarket shoppers may have a surprise waiting at the end of their checkout lanes: No disposable plastic or paper bags will be available for their groceries.

 "I don't think many consumers at all know this is coming," Ray Cantor, vice president of government affairs for the New Jersey Business & Industry Association, told 70and73.com in an interview. "It's something we've all got to get used to but it's not a seamless process."

Many consumers in the state continue to puzzle through the disappearance of freely distributed plastic straws at convenience stores and restaurants, a ban that began last November under the New Jersey law that tries to address widespread plastic pollution and the danger that plastic litter poses to wildlife.

And, on Wednesday, May 4, most retailers can no longer offer single-use plastic bags and large markets also are banned from offering single-use paper bags as well.

Grocery items will need to go into reusable bags. The state has even specified that those bags must have some form of stitching on the handles. Besides the mandatory stitching, the state law requires your reusable bag to be made of polypropylene fabric, PET nonwoven fabric, nylon, cloth, hemp product or other washable fabric and is manufactured for multiple reuses.

The May 4 law does not stop with bags. It also bans polystyrene-foam, food-service trays and containers. However, delays and waivers are being built into the state Department of Environmental Protection rules to prevent consumer chaos and allow transition by businesses. For example, most of the plastic trays used to package raw meat, poultry or fish will be exempt for two years after the May 4 ban.

For bags, the law targets mostly the plastic chosen in the cliché "paper or plastic" question in the market as the consumer pays for the product.

Consumers not alone in confusion

A DEP virtual meeting this week for the industry and government leaders listed requirements and exemptions under the law, but DEP officials holding the meeting said the agency was looking for external input before final regulations are written.

One slide at the meeting detailed the kind of single-use plastic bags that, at least for now, could still be used including those used to package loose items such as vegetables and fruits, deli items, soup or hot foods, dry cleaning, prescription drugs and newspapers.

» GET MORE INFORMATION: The DEP's "Get Past Plastic" website.

Industry leaders at the DEP webinar drilled down into the potential confusion of business owners and consumers about what still is permitted. 

One smaller retailer, not subject to the ban on single-use paper bags (that prohibition applies to markets larger than 2,500 square feet), said his solution is simple: His shop would comply and dump the single-use plastic and instead bag products with single-use paper. 

Another retailer said that charging for reusable bags will have "a very negative impact on our customers," so his market has been collecting cardboard boxes and will make them available to consumers, much like the bag-less Aldi grocery store chain has done for years.

Mary Ellen Peppard, vice president of the New Jersey Food Council, an association representing food stores, rationalized an exemption for bagged hot foods at the DEP session. The difference is that the single-use plastic bag is handed to you with the hot food and not at the checkout, she said. The DEP showed a photo of an acceptable single-use Wawa plastic bag holding containers of two hot foods.

Safety is one of the issues, Peppard said.

Peppard said her council is working on communications tools and signs to help educate members and consumers. 

"It's very complex," Cantor, of the business and industry association, said of the law, which was signed by Gov. Phil Murphy in November 2020. "There are very few people who really understand it."

Cantor also said the reusable bag comes with concerns. During the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, stores were concerned about contamination with reusable bags coming from home. The bags, which many consumers may store in their cars, get dirty. 

Advice from a grocer experienced with bans

The Wegmans supermarket chain has had to work with single-use plastic bag bans in other states, including its home state of New York.

However, the New Jersey ban on single-use paper bags for large markets like Wegmans is a new wrinkle, according to Jason Wadsworth, Wegmans' category merchant for packaging, energy and sustainability. Wadsworth responded this week in an email to 70and73.com's questions about the law's impact.

"Ahead of transitioning out of plastic bags in New York, companywide surveys showed the vast majority of our customers already owned reusable bags," Wadsworth said. "But what was even more insightful, was the top reason customers used a combination of reusable and single-use plastic bags — they'd forget their reusable bags at home or in the car."

He said Wegmans used signs throughout its parking lots and at store entrances to remind consumers to bring along their own bags.

"We also increased the variety of our reusable bag offerings and merchandised them so customers could easily see and grab what they needed as they headed to the checkout," said Wadsworth, who noted the Wegmans 99-cents bags have the required stitching on their handles. 

New York State banned the plastic bags in 2020. In 2014, California was the first state to impose a statewide ban on single-use plastic bags, according to earthday.org. Some other states have adopted their own bans or imposed per-unit taxes on each single-use bag.

Educating the Wegmans workforce in New York state was the best way to help consumers through the transition, Wadsworth said. 

"The biggest mistake retailers can make is underestimating the impact the elimination of single-use bags will have on their business," Wadsworth said. "It's not as simple as no longer offering bags at checkout. Making this change creates a sizable ripple effect that impacts multiple business areas, including transportation, costs, and front-end processes and operations, to name a few."

Who will enforce the law in New Jersey?

At the DEP industry webinar, some asked who would police the new law. 

Enforcement will fall to the DEP, counties and municipalities, the DEP officials said.

In South Jersey's largest municipality, Cherry Hill, the Township expects to work with the DEP, the New Jersey State League of Municipalities and staff members to learn more about enforcement mechanisms, Michelle Caffrey, the Township's communications director, said in an email response to 70and73.com questions.

"We understand that business owners, especially small business owners who are still recovering from the financial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, may require time to adjust, and our goal is to work with them as partners so our community can achieve the aims of this law together," Caffrey said.

Caffrey said the Township planned to begin a consumer education campaign on Friday to encourage residents to get into the habit of taking reusable bags to the supermarket.

The impact of plastic pollution

The full first page of the New Jersey law provides a detailed rationale for why the legislature thought it was needed.

"Since 1950, global annual production of plastics has increased from two million tons to over 381 million tons," the law states. "Approximately one-third of all plastics produced are single-use plastics, which are plastics designed to be used only once and then thrown away and that an estimated 100 billion single-use plastic carryout bags and 25 billion Styrofoam plastic coffee cups are thrown away in the United States each year."

Less than 10 percent of plastics are recycled, according to several industry and research sources, with the bulk going into landfills, incinerated or becoming litter.

"Plastics released in the environment do not biodegrade, but instead break down into smaller pieces, known as microplastics, which accumulate in the natural environment and are eaten by fish and other marine life. And that microplastic pollution moves through natural food webs and accumulates in fish and shellfish tissues, which means microplastics and associated pollutants can move into the food chain," the law states.

Plastic, plastic everywhere

Widespread use of plastics did not occur until after World War II, according to "Production, use and fate of all plastics ever made," a scholarly article by Roland Geyer, Jenna R. Jambeck and Kara Lavender Law that appeared in Science Advances in 2017.

"The ensuing rapid growth in plastics production is extraordinary, surpassing most other man-made materials," the researchers stated.

Because most commonly used plastics are not biodegradable, "they accumulate, rather than decompose, in landfills or the natural environment," they wrote. "Plastics' largest market is packaging, an application whose growth was accelerated by a global shift from reusable to single-use containers."

And there is no immediate slowdown in sight.

"Since 2004, the world has made as much plastic as it did in the previous half century," according to Christopher J. Rhodes, writing in Science Progress journal in 2018. 

"Between 1950 and 2015, a total of 6.3 billion tons of primary and secondary (recycled) plastic waste was generated, of which around 9% has been recycled, and 12% incinerated, with the remaining 79% either being stored in landfills or having been released directly into the natural environment," he stated in "Plastic Pollution and Potential Solutions."

While the focus around the world has been on single-use plastic bags used for shopping, other sources of plastic pollution have not been as apparent.

A scholarly article in Environmental Pollution last year pointed to another source of plastics pollution: the DPB, or dog-poop bag, as it termed that tool of dog walkers.

Do not overlook the damage those bags may cause, according to authors Lei Mai, Elaine Zeng and Eddy Y. Zeng in their article "Dog poop bags: A non-negligible source of plastic pollution."

"Little attention has been directed towards plastic waste derived from plastic dog poop bags, which are widely used and can never be recycled," the authors wrote.

"Combining the weight of each DPB, the number of bags daily used for a dog, and the number of pet dogs around the world, we estimated the number of annual consumed and disposed DPBs at more than 415 billion, or equivalently 0.76 to 1.23 million tons of plastics," they wrote.