Bag Tax Delayed Until Feb. 1 As City Scraps Plastic Bag Ban
By Stephen Gossett in News on Dec 29, 2016 3:34PM
The impending pocketbook sting of the upcoming bag tax has been pushed back one month, as the city delayed the start date of the 7-cent per-bag fee from Jan. 1 to Feb. 1. The measure will also no longer include a ban on plastic bags—you’ll just still have to pay extra for them.
The pushback is intended to allow retailers more time to add charging mechanisms to their POS systems. Although shoppers might want to take advantage of the grace period as well, by scrounging up change or—better yet—rustling up totes. Maybe you can even take this old friend out of retirement.
As the Sun-Times noted, Ald. Proco Joe Moreno (1st Ward), who sponsored the plastic bag ban, was a bit peeved with its repeal. “The steps we took reduced consumption,” Moreno said, via the Sun-Times. “Anecdotally, you can see it in our streets and trees. It was a good first step we took.”
So any cynics out there who said the ban was always more about revenue than the environment, well, maybe that wasn’t so cynical after all.