Sam Gurwitt Photos
Clockwise from top left: Motherland Market’s Moore: Plastic’s stronger. Hing Wha’s Singh with reusable bags. Hooks: Good for protecting sneakers. US Deli’s Tracy: Paper rips.
If Hamden and New Haven ban single-use plastic bags, merchants may personally favor the idea, but they’re not so sure about their shoppers.
Dee Price: Plastic bags are useful.
Her co-worker Jayla Hooks cut in.
“Oh, and when it’s raining outside and you just got a new pair of sneakers!”
Jayla listed a few other uses for the thin bags she gives out to customers when they ask for plastic: to wrap food before throwing it out, and as a glove when you don’t have rubber gloves and need to clean something nasty.
Price and Jayla may soon have to look elsewhere for shower caps, trash bags, and sneaker bags, as both Hamden and New Haven are considering bans on single-use plastic checkout bags. (New Haven passed a ban, then repealed it in 1995 over concern for the impact on small business.)
Jayla Hooks: Plastic’s good for wet sneaker..
Hamden’s proposed new ban is further along; the Legislative Council plans a final vote on the measure on Feb. 4 after hearing overwhelming support for the idea at a hearing this week. New Haven mayoral aide Esther Armaand said she is in the process of drafting a similar bill to submit to the city’s Board of Alders.
At this week’s Hamden hearing, not a single business owner or manager spoke, which gave a few council members pause. They said they want to hear how the ban would affect Hamden businesses before moving forward.
So Hamden Mayor Curt Leng posted on Facebook asking Hamden residents their views on the proposed ban on plastic bags and the soft ban on straws (the town is also considering an ordinance requiring that businesses give out straws only when asked for). The post received 280 comments. As of Thursday afternoon, 146 commenters had expressed support while only 12 said they oppose the plastic bag ban. Eight were in between.
Meanwhile, in conversations this week with the Independent, Dixwell Avenue store managers and workers on both sides of the Hamden-New Haven/Newhallville border generally supported the idea of the ban but noted that their customers prefer the convenience of plastic bags, a sentiment echoed in interviews with some of those customers.
“It’s About Convenience.”
Ed Funaro: “it’s about convenience.”
Over 100,000 single-use plastic bags are estimated to end up in the Long Island Sound each year. In 2009, Westport became the first town east of the Mississippi to pass a plastic bag ban. If Hamden goes ahead with the ban, it may be an inconvenience to shoppers, and residents may have to look for cheap alternatives for shower caps, rain protection for sneakers, and trash bags, but the town will join Westport and a few other Connecticut towns in taking a progressive step toward conservation and environmental protection.
At Visel’s Pharmacy, owner Edmund Funaro said that if there were a ban on plastic bags, he would honor it. He said he understands concerns about the environment. A plastic bag ban would not be a burden for the business, he said, but it might be for customers.
“It really comes down to, it’s a convenience item for a customer to carry a plastic bag,” he said. “Most people prefer plastic.”
But it’s not just about them,” he added. “They have to think about the big picture, have to think about the environment.”
Visel’s is an independent pharmacy on the New Haven side of the line that has been in operation for over a hundred years; it opened in 1913. The business has been in Funaro’s family since 1965.
His customers were divided on bags.
“And what are you going to use, paper?” asked Danny Cooper of New Haven. If plastic bags were banned, he said, it would “probably be a little bit [of an] inconvenience.”
Shopper Danny Cooper: “An inconvenience.”
Michelle, also of New Haven, had a different view: “There’s so much trash on the beach.” She said that if bans “make the planet last a little longer, I support it.” When she goes shopping, she uses reusable bags — one cloth, and one insulated to keep food cold.
Tracy, who runs US Deli Plus convenience store, was not excited about the prospect of a plastic bag ban. “It would be hard running a business and not having plastic bags to give to customers.”
Paper, she said, would not be a suitable replacement.
“Paper bags, they rip, you have to carry them a certain way, and a lot of people catches the bus… the bag will burst and then you have all the products on the ground.”
US Deli owner Tracy with son Jajvion: Paper rips.
Aida Moore, owner of Motherland Market, an African grocery on the Hamden side of the border, echoed Tracy. “The stuff is heavy, and the paper bag is not that strong, but the plastic bag is strong… The convenient one is a plastic bag because it’s easy to carry, you know… If they banish the plastic bag they have to find something strong.”
Despite the views of shop owners and workers themselves on the issue of plastic bags, all said the same thing of their customers: They always prefer plastic bags.
Food waits to be carried off at Ali Baba Fusion.
Patel, who works at Happy Harry’s Wine and Liquor Discount Warehouse at 956 Dixwell in Hamden, said he does not like plastic bags. They’re a big problem in India, where he’s from. He would support the ban, but his customers all want plastic, he said. “Sometimes I give paper, they say ‘no I don’t want that’.”
Just up the street at Ali Baba Fusion, Aisha Ismail said that we use too many plastic bags, and she’s concerned about the impact they have on the environment. But she said that most customers think it’s rude when you don’t give them a plastic bag.
Goal: Think
Wing Madness customer Andrea: “Plastic bags come in handy sometimes.”
Such ideas about convenience may be exactly why a plastic bag ban is necessary. For Brad Macdowall, the Hamden Legislative Council member who introduced the bag ban, the goal is to make people people think about how their consumption affects the environment. “It’s going to change the way that we behave as consumers,” he told the Independent.
Despite the overwhelming preference of customers for plastic bags, some businesses visited this week have already tried to transition away from plastic. Wing Madness doesn’t give out plastic bags anymore, for instance. Anna Forrest, who was working at the desk Wednesday afternoon, spoke for the manager. Paper bags are “more expensive, but he uses paper because of the benefits he sees from them,” she said.
When the manager got back a few minutes later, he shouted from the kitchen, where he was preparing a sauce: “Plastic bags are no good! Paper goes green!”
Hing Wah, a Chinese take-out restaurant in Hamden, went a step further last year. The manager, Bobby Singh, explained that he had actually ordered and given out 8000 reusable bags to customers for free in order to help them stop being so reliant on plastic. Yet only once did a customer come back with one of the bags to pick up food. The same customers who had received a bag would return the next time empty handed and ask for plastic and say “Oh, I use them for trash bags.”
Bobby Singh, manager of Hing Wah, and one of the reusable bags he gave out last year.
Paper bags, Singh told the Independent, cost about 18 percent more than plastic. Nonetheless, he stopped using plastic bags for a time. But because of customer demands, he had to revert to using them again. Bobby became interested in environmental conservation because of his sister, who is a doctor and is very concerned about the effects of plastic on the environment and on health. He said that he would absolutely support a town-wide ban on single-use plastic bags.
At King David House of Essence, a shop in Newhallville that sells jewelry and trinkets and incense, two men waffled about plastic. One, an immigrant from Trinidad, said he was concerned about the effect of plastic on human health. He said plastic is clogging up oceans and waterways around the world. “If the fish eat plastic, we will too,” he said. But he added that whenever the government acts to stem the flow of plastic into the rivers, it needs to consider workers, and find a solution that will prevent people from losing their jobs.
Mitzy, who works at Jane Beauty Supply, said she is ready for the town to take that step. “Everybody need to put a little bit to get a better earth,” she said.
“I got my kids, so it’s another generation that I’m leaving here.”
Abandoned on the sidewalk.
There are so many uses for plastic bags - but the most important is that they are strong enough not to break with your groceries or items you purchase. And if you collect more than you can use, you can take them to the grocery store where they can be recycled into more bags or into wood, plastic composite decking and more. Paper bags, even thick ones, the handles tear and your stuff falls out.