Save money, skip plastic

Starting today, ready or not, expect to pay a 10-cent tax on every single-use plastic bag you use to haul away your groceries or merchandise from a Connecticut retailer.

Our expectation is that the state is not ready and that many consumers will be surprised by the added tax. Some smaller retailers probably won’t immediately start assessing it. The biggest flaw in the legislation passed during the state legislative session that ended in June was providing so little time for public education and for business owners and consumers to prepare for the change.

Don’t get us wrong, discouraging the use of these plastic bags — and a conversion to reusable bags — is good news for the state’s environment. If people were careful and conscientious, the thin plastic bags would not be such a problem. They can be recycled for other uses. Or if properly disposed of as garbage in Connecticut, they end up as fuel in trash-to-energy incinerators, generating electricity.

But people are not careful and the bags, many thousands of them, end up littering our environment. They are particularly dangerous to marine animals that can accidentally — and fatally — swallow the bags or get caught in them.

Under the law, the 10-cent tax is supposed to be assessed by grocers, convenience and department stores, pharmacies, restaurants, hardware stores — any retail business that sells stuff.

Having discouraged plastic bag use with the tax, the law calls for an outright ban beginning July 1, 2021. In the meantime, the legislature is counting on the tax bringing in big revenue — $27 million for each of the next two years — but that is unlikely to pan out. Two major supermarket chains — Stop & Shop and Big Y — announced they are immediately ending the use of the plastic bags, meaning no bag-tax revenue from those stores.

Also unclear is how retailers will assess the tax on consumers who use the self-checkout lanes and do their own bagging. Self-checkout is becoming ubiquitous.

Towns are free to pass their own bag bans. Stonington did so in April. Its law goes into effect in a few months.

Bottom line, if you haven’t bothered purchasing reusable bags, it’s time.