Hamden Preps For Bag Ban

• Takes effect Saturday.
• Is New Haven next?
• The view from Walmart, Stop & Shop, and Ali Baba’s Fusion.

That receipt checker’s job got a lot more difficult at the beginning of August when Connecticut imposed a 10-cent tax on single-use plastic checkout bags. And starting on Saturday, when Hamden’s complete ban goes into effect, shoppers in Hamden won’t be able to get a plastic checkout bag at all.

In February, the Hamden Legislative Council passed a ban on the single-use plastic bags that stores give out as a courtesy to customers to carry their purchases. It also passed an ordinance that will prevent businesses from giving out single-use plastic straws unless customers ask for them.

New Haven is also considering a ban. (Read more about that here.)

The Hamden Walmart opted to start the full ban on plastic bags before Hamden’s ban goes into effect on Saturday. Customers now have the option of getting a paper bag for 10 cents or a blue reusable Walmart bag for 50 or 99 cents, depending on the style. Other stores in the state still offer plastic bags for 10 cents, or will until July of 2021, when the state’s 10-cent fee turns into a full ban.

Walmart’s receipt-checking policy predates Connecticut’s soft bag ban. Many of the customers walking out holding their products on Thursday said they were used to showing their receipts at the door. But now that many fewer customers leave the store with bags, checking receipts has become more difficult. If customers leave the store with a cart-full of un-bagged products, the worker at the entrance is supposed to make sure every item in the cart is also listed on the receipt.

One department manager at Hamden’s Walmart, who asked that she remain unnamed, said that customers sometimes get mad when they’re asked to show a receipt.

None of the customers who spoke with the Independent on Thursday seemed to mind the policy, though some said they feel for the employee who has to check the receipts.

“A lot of stuff is going to walk out of the store,” speculated Louis Bosley as he walked to his car with a container of gummy candies. It must be hard for whoever has to check receipts now that the ban is in effect, he said.

(Read a previous article about shoppers’ and merchants’ views about plastic bags here).

Hamden’s Ban

In February, Hamden’s Legislative Council heard the pleas of dozens of citizen activists who said that banning single-use plastic bags is an important step in curbing plastic consumption and protecting the ecosystems where those bags end up.

Public Works Director Craig Cesare told the Independent that plastic bags are a problem for public works.

“We’re constantly picking them up off the canal line, off the side of the road. They get everywhere. It’s a nuisance,” he said.

Businesses are still allowed to give paper bags as a courtesy to customers, but those bags must be made of at least 40 percent recycled material and must be recyclable themselves. Plastic produce bags, like the thin bags provided in the produce section of grocery stores, are not subject to the ban.

The Quinnipiac Valley Health District (QVHD), which already conducts health inspections in Hamden businesses, will partner with the town to help enforce the ordinance. When it enters businesses, QVHD will check to make sure they are not giving out plastic checkout bags. If it finds that a business is out of compliance, it will notify the town. Hamden’s litter enforcement officer will then issue a written warning. If the business is found to violate the ordinance again after the warning, the enforcement officer will issue a notice of violation, and the business will have 30 days to comply with the ordinance. Another violation will result in a fine of $150, and any subsequent violation $250.

(Find more information about the ban here).

Councilman Brad Macdowall, who introduced the ordinance and helped push it through the council, said that he wanted an all-out ban on plastic bags, not the tax that the state has introduced.

“Putting a tax on plastic bags is a very regressive tax,” he told the Independent. ​“It can be harmful to people who struggle to pay for their groceries every week.” Hamden’s ban, he said, has protected shoppers from ​“that tax on poor people.”

Both Stop and Shop and ShopRite have taken Hamden’s ban one step further by enacting a full ban statewide. Both stores now offer paper bags for 10 cents. Sturdier reusable bags are 99 cents at ShopRite and two for a dollar at Stop and Shop (or $2.49 if you’d like to donate part of the purchase to charity).

Something To Get Used To

At stores along Dixwell Avenue, customers and business owners mostly said Connecticut’s 10-cent tax has not been too much trouble.

“Everybody’s on board,” said Carlos Heberto of Mela’s Mart at 1064 Dixwell in Hamden. ​“Everything’s been running smooth.” He said he did have one customer complain that he had to pay for a bag, but after Heberto explained that it was to protect the environment, he said, the customer calmed down.

Aida Harris of Motherland Market, an African grocery at 897 Dixwell, on the other hand, has heard some grumbling from her customers.

“Some of them complain and say the state [imposes] too much tax for plastic, but they don’t have a choice and they buy it,” she said.

Jean Mahoundi, who stopped by Harris’s store on Monday, was one of those customers. ​“It’s extra money for nothing,” he said.

Harris said she was still waiting for her first order of paper bags to prepare for Hamden’s ban.

At Visel’s Pharmacy, on the New Haven side of the Hamden-New Haven border, the plastic-bag fee has posed a similar issue to that at Walmart. Since Visel’s has two checkout areas — one at the back of the store where the pharmacy is and one up front — the cashier at the front now has to look at receipts because so many customers walk out without a bag, said worker Denine Price. Price said she probably sells only two or three plastic bags a day.

Most shoppers who spoke with the Independent seemed not to mind the ban.

“Even if plastic bags came back, I don’t think I ever would go back,” said Demetra Barr (pictured below) as she sat having an after-school meal with her sons in Ali Baba’s Fusion. She said she had just left Stop and Shop, where she had used her own bags. ​“I’m kind of happy they forced it on us,” she said.

Dave and DJ Riches (pictured below) arrived at Stop and Shop to find that Dave’s mother in law had taken their reusable bags out of the trunk of their car. So, they piled all of their groceries into their cart and simply wheeled them, loose, to the car.

Amanda Auen (pictured below with son Bennett) gave the ban rave reviews. ​“We love it,” she said. ​“It makes us more conscious and we’ve embraced it.” Before the ban, she said, she tried to remember her reusable bags but often forgot and used the free plastic ones instead, but now that Stop and Shop no longer offers plastic bags, she consistently remembers her reusable ones.

Many shoppers, however, will still need time to get accustomed to the ban.

Debbie Maldonado carried a pile of clothes out of Walmart on Thursday, and had to show her receipt to the employee at the door. Not getting plastic bags, she said, is annoying, but she will survive.

“Is it annoying? Yes. Is it something you have to deal with? Yes. Can we get used to it? Yes.”