Starting Sunday, Toronto retailers will no longer be required to charge customers a five-cent fee for plastic shopping bags.
On June 6 city council voted to scrap the fee, which was introduced in 2009 by former mayor David Miller in an effort to reduce the use of plastic bags and encourage the use of reusable bags.
Now, city stores will no longer be required by law to charge customers for a plastic bag. However, it will be up to each individual business whether they continue the practice or not.
Some retailers have already stated that they would continue charging customers for plastic bags.
Mayor Rob Ford commended council’s decision to scrap the bag fee.
"Consumer behaviour has changed and plastic carry-out shopping bags are 100 per cent recyclable,” said Ford. “It will now be up to retailers to decide how they run their businesses and if they choose to charge for plastic bags in their stores.”
Earlier this year, the mayor lobbied to have the five-cent fee scrapped. Council struck down the fee, and then in a surprising move proceeded to ban plastic bags altogether.
The ban on all plastic bags will take effect on Jan 1, 2013.
This means that while city residents will no longer have to pay five cents to purchase a plastic bag starting Sunday, they will not be able to purchase plastic bags at all in 2013.
Toronto is the first large Canadian city to approve a plastic-bag ban. Other cities that have imposed similar bans include San Francisco and Seattle.
Ford strongly condemned the plastic-bag ban, saying he believed the city would be sued as a result of the ban. He also called the ban “the dumbest thing council has done.”
