The rollout of Oak Park’s new 10-cent fee for disposable paper and plastic bags last week was surprisingly smooth with few hiccups, village officials, environmental advocates and store owners said.
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Marynda “Mindy” Agnew, who has been Oak Park’s sustainability coordinator for approximately one month, said she was surprised that her office had received few complaints from stores or shoppers.
“It has been a lot smoother than I expected,” Agnew said.
Agnew credited the lessons Oak Park officials learned from Chicago’s experience of imposing a 7-cents-per-disposable bag fee in February with helping Oak Park officials craft the village’s fee and avoiding some pitfalls.
Agnew said she was focused on making sure that low-income Oak Park residents had access to free reusable bags to help them avoid the fee and having to pay for totes.
More than 11,000 free bags had been distributed by the village and nonprofit groups, Agnew said. Bags are available at several locations throughout Oak Park, including Village Hall, 123 Madison St., and the Public Works Building, 201 South Blvd.
“We want to make sure that people have access to the bags they need, especially if they can’t afford them,” Agnew said.
Approved unanimously by the Oak Park Village Board in August, the 10-cent fee applies to large retailers, with shops of more than 5,000 square feet. Retailers keep 5 cents of each fee, while the other 5 cents is earmarked for the village’s sustainability fund, which will be used to pay for education campaigns and reusable bags, Agnew said.
The fee — which shows up as a separate line item on shoppers’ receipts — does not apply to bags for bulk items, prescription drugs or dry cleaning, as well as yard waste or garbage bags, officials said. In addition, the fee does not apply to bags for purchases at farmers’ markets or street fairs. Bags for restaurant carry-out orders and leftovers are also not subject to the fee, officials said.
Vanessa Dremonas, of Pete’s Fresh Market, said the store used the same technology and training program as it did at its seven Chicago stores last year to implement the Oak Park bag fee. Dremonas praised village officials for a comprehensive public education campaign.
“It was not too cumbersome,” Dremonas said of the rollout of the fee.
Cashiers are trained to ask shoppers how many bags they want, but most shoppers tell clerks to use as many bags as necessary. Others, however, “try to cram as much as possible into one or two bags,” Dremonas said.
“For the record, we don’t recommend that!” Dremonas said via email.
Most complaints have come from those using benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, often referred to as food stamps, to purchase groceries, Dremonas said. Their bags are not exempt from the fee because it is not a tax, she added.
Others have taken to social media to complain about the fee, with most of the nastiest complaints coming from those who don’t realize it is a village-wide fee, and not specific to Pete’s Fresh Market, Dremonas said.
The biggest confusion about the fee centered around the store’s hot foods department, and whether the store needed to charge for the bags used with prepared-to-order items, Dremonas said.
“We asked the village about this gray area since our expansive hot foods department is akin to a cafeteria or restaurant although it is within the confines of a grocery store, and they gave their approval to not charge for those specific bags,” Dremonas said.
The 5 cents that retailers will keep from the fee won’t be an additional source of revenue for stores, Dremonas said, adding that it “barely covers the cost of the bags themselves.”
Retailers who do not impose the 10-cent disposable bag fee could be fined $150 per offense, officials said.
Dick Alton, the co-chairman of the Interfaith Green Network, a faith-based sustainability group that is made up of 17 congregations, said he was pleased with the rollout of the fee.
“It will take time to educate people,” Alton said. “We just can’t be a throwaway society anymore.”
Americans use approximately 100 billion plastic bags annually, and most end up in landfills or as litter, environmental groups estimate. Alton he was not concerned about the fee having a disproportionate impact on low-income Oak Park residents, since his coalition and the village are working to hand out reusable bags.
“We all have a responsibility to the environment,” Alton said. “We all need to be on the same page.”
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Oak Park officials said they were hopeful that the number of disposable bags used in Oak Park will drop as significantly as it did in Chicago after the city imposed a bag fee. Although Chicago officials expected to generate $9.2 million from the city’s 7-cent bag fee, it took in only $5 million in 2017 — 54 percent less than expected, according to Chicago’s 2018 budget.
“We are definitely hoping for a similar drop in Oak Park in the number of bags used,” Agnew said, cautioning that a village survey found that 50 percent of Oak Park residents used reusable bags — even before the fee was imposed.
“It is early, though,” Agnew said of the barely week-old fee. “This is a dynamic program. There will be issues, and we will deal with them.”
Heather Cherone is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.