City and county will start taxing plastic bags Jan. 1
Shoppers in Charlottesville and Albemarle County may want to make it a point to remember to carry their own reusable bags to the stores in the new year.
Both municipalities will start charging a five cent fee on single-use plastic bags at grocery stores, pharmacies, and convenience stores on January 1, 2023. A few examples of convenience stores are 7-11 and Wawa. Any single-use plastic bag used at the checkout of a large retailer that has a grocery store or a pharmacy, such as the Walmart Supercenter or the Target on Route 29, will also cost five cents. The fee will not apply to solely retail businesses, such as clothes stores.
Only the sacks used at the checkout counter will be subject to the tax. It won't apply to plastic produce bags or other kinds of food packaging that comes in plastic bags. In an effort to lessen the pollution brought on by single-use plastic bags, the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors and the Charlottesville City Council both decided to enact the levy this year.
Plastic bags wreak havoc on the environment. National Geographic calls it one of the most pressing environmental issues of our time, as hundreds of thousands of tons of plastic bags are discarded globally each year. Bags that end up in landfills will take 1,000 years to decompose. Those that end up in waterways kill animals and ruin entire ecosystems, said the United Nations, according to reporting by the BBC. All the while, decomposing plastics leak harmful chemicals into the water, the soil, and even the air.
In 2020, the Virginia legislature passed a law permitting local governments in Virginia to charge five cents for each disposable plastic bag given out at the register. The tax must be collected by retailers and sent to the Virginia Department of Taxation. Retailers are permitted by law to either pay the tax themselves or charge it to customers. According to the legislation, those money will be returned to the city and the county to be used in four distinct ways:
Educate the public to reduce environmental waste;
Mitigate pollution and litter;
Clean up the environment;
Fund reusable bags for people who receive benefits through the Supplemental Nutrition and Assistance Program (SNAP) and its subsidiary program specifically for women, infants and children (WIC). Those benefits have strict guidelines for what they can and cannot be used for, and they cannot be used to purchase grocery bags.
The money will be used, according to the county and the city, to buy and give away reusable bags to WIC and SNAP recipients.
Alex Ikefuna, director of the city's Office of Community Solutions, stated that the city has not yet calculated the amount of money it expects to receive from the tax. But in October, the City Council gave the reusable bag program $20,000 in financing. According to Ikefuna, the city has already ordered the bags and will distribute them through its Department of Social Services, which already assists people who get SNAP and WIC services. In total, that amounts to 3,600 households or 5,000 people. The social services coordinator must be contacted directly by the people who need the bags.
The location of the bags' distribution has not been determined by Albemarle County. The county website will be updated in January, according to officials. Abbey Stumpf, the county's manager of communications and public engagement, predicted that the levy would bring in around $20,000 during the first half of the year. As part of the budgeting process in the future, the county will assess the bag tax revenue. According to Stumpf, it might be put to use in some other way or to keep up the distribution of reusable bags.
The local Sierra Club chapter has been gathering reusable bags in preparation of the fee going into force for months. To date, the organization has given away around 200 bags to Reid's Super Save Market on Preston Avenue in Charlottesville, Earlysville, and food pantries in both cities. Michael Pillow, a club member, has just under 100 additional bags in his car's trunk. He intends to distribute them to people who require bags but do not qualify for SNAP or WIC services. Pillow wants to establish a designated drop-off and pickup location for the Sierra Club, which does not currently have one.
TLPPACKAGING FOR SHOPPING BAGS
