I noted this a while ago in a post about coronavirus numbers and the effect of the pandemic on "essential" retail. A few grocery stores aren't allowing for the usage of re-usable bags I know for sure the Jewel-Osco, Whole Foods Market, and Target if you go to a cashier they won't package your items in your reusable bags.
Personally reusable bags are very convenient, however, what's noted in this John Stossel video is that there are many of us who don't take the time out to clean them. Sometimes I throw them in the washers, however, sometimes it's just something that I don't take the time to do. If you don't clean them then you could be carrying microbes on your reusable bags that are often dangerous.
Stossel takes aim at the attempts by governments around the nation to ban plastic bags. Chicago has asserted a 7 cent bag tax to encourage use of reusable bags. It's understood that they want to discourage use of those plastic "Jewel" bags. Unfortunately whether or not you use a "Jewel" bag or a paper bag, you still get charged a 7 cent tax. And paper is not only better for the environment not only because they are reusable (even if fragile as you see in video above) they are also recyclable, yet if we use a paper bag from a store we STILL get charged a tax.
Another thing of note is that while Whole Foods, Target, and Jewel that I know of for sure seemed to have waived collecting the city' bag tax. If you go to Mariano's and use a bag with them they will still charge you the 7 cent tax.
In my opinion, who knows if this is going away. Since the pandemic has caused the shut down of many businesses, surely tax revenues are down. Since in many places there is already a bag tax enacted, my idea is this is one convenient tax that won't go away. Especially since people during this difficult time still got to go out to shop for "essential" items.
Any other retailer - especially grocery stores - still charging you the 7 cent bag tax? Let us know...
