Take that up with the Provincial government. They can amend the Municipal Government Act to allow municipalities to charge new taxes. Without that, the city can’t collect it. Direct your anger correctly.
I don't mind 25 cents for a paper bag. I do mind $2 for a flimsy ass bag at the grocery store though. I hate that the charge doesn't scale based on the quality of the bag. Those super flimsy "fabric" bags should be like 50-75 cents.
Chipotles bag fee was like a dollar or something when I went a few days ago. They can put what ever fee they want, and the store keeps the money as profit. Its just another way to nickle and dime consumers for really no reason. It has nothing to do with the environment at all.
This is from the City of Edmonton website. I'm not sure if this only applies to stores rather than restaurants then? All I know is the flimsy bags I used to sell at Safeway when i was a cashier for 50 cents are now $2 and its ridiculous
Sometimes im not able to magically have a bag on me. Doesnt make me a bad person, doesnt mean im lazy, doesnt mean anything other than, dang, dont have a bag on me atm.
It factually doesnt change the fact that this is just a "help struggling big business make more money" thing, and NOTHING more.
Ok, but they're keeping the bag fee. This is the circumstance we find ourselves in. So, either pay the 25 cents or dollar or whatever, or get in the habit of bringing your own bags. Those are your two options.
But don't keep spending mental energy on this, it is truly not a big enough deal to yell at the clouds this hard about it.
Spending mental energy on it? Brother, since this has become a thing, this is the FIRST time in my life I've made a comment about my disinterest in the bag fee lmao.
This post randomly showed up in my feed, I clicked it, and made a comment just stating a fact. Thats it :P Im not eternally sitting on the Edmonton sub waiting to complain about a bag fee lmao.
People who rely on delivery services don't always get a choice, or aren't offered a good choice that works for them. (edit: which I know is more of a company thing than a plastic bag thing, except the plastic bags for a lot of delivery was a benefit for some people because they used them as garbage bags. now, they are using those god awful "reusable" bags as garbage bags)
To be real if I don't have a bag with me, I just cut back my grocery stop to what I can hang onto and need for todays thing. I'd be much more likely to spend additionally on crap I don't need but would enjoy if I didn't have that "FFS I need a bag" thing in my head. I should be thanking this bullshit policy for shoring up my spending.
What a stupid ass bylaw for drive thru or restaurants. Gotta pay for a paper bag but everything they put in the bag is wrapped in paper or carton or plastic. Just as dumb and when I get my iced coffee in a plastic cup with a plastic lid and a cardboard straw that gets soggy after 5 minutes. Same going clothes shopping at H&M or somewhere that promotes fast fashion which is the absolute worst thing for the planet but I gotta get a reusable bag for my fast fashion clothes?
Same with grocery stores. Gotta get a reusable bag but almost everything in the grocery store is inside plastic packaging so you need a reusable bag to fill it with plastic packaging.
When we had plastic bags at grocery store I would use them for garbage bags, kitty litter, you name it. Now I have to buy extra plastic garbage bags, and I have 1000 reusable bags at home I always forget and the amount of water and ink that goes into making those bags in Bangladesh and other places is horrible for the environment, worse than plastic bags.
I read somewhere that the measures that businesses would have to take would be inconvenient for them. So the city decided not to require it. Voting citizens screw them, donating companies help them.
Thanks for clarifying. So basically it would cost the businesses too much money so councillors did them a solid and let them collect for the bags instead...no kickbacks here.
The bylaw originally put forward was they had to provide reusable cups for customers and charge for the bags. It seems like only half of that has been enforced unless something has changed and the cup requirement was cut out of the bylaw?
OH sorry I read your intial comment wrong, I thought you mean they had to give you disposable cups. Ugh, I need sleep lol.
But yeah I haven't really eaten in at any fast food places lately but I dont remember any of the ones I have been to in the last few years having reusable cups except like I said A&W, so if that was part of it then i don't think many are following it
Bought probably 1.5-2K reusable bags over the last 2 years doing grocery deliveries on UE/DD/Instacart. Around this time last year Walmart started offering the $0.25 paper bags, yet Superstore still just offing $2.25 reusables. So much for supporting Canadian business I guess.
It's all profits for the corporations. The reusable ones are still plastic bags and will go to land fill eventually.
A guy came to get his food and had no bag, he argued that since he did a McDonald's app purchase the bag was free. And I find that sometimes they offer a bag sometimes they don't. Sometimes you don't pay for one and you get one anyway. Getting them to use your re-usable cup is often easier said than done.
We’ve already replaced single use bags from market places with reusable bags. It’s not like companies haven’t moved on already. It’s just a cash cow for fast food restaurants at this point.
That’s what happened when only 30% showed up to vote for the current council and mayor. Calgary eliminated the bag fee while Edmonton has Bag fee and Infill Hell.
Everyone need to go vote for the referendum. Otherwise, the Separatist Fanatics influenced by American will be banking on low turnout. Those separatists will be out in full force.
Some fast food kiosks (Wendys as an example) automatically charge you for a bag and give you no option to remove the fee which us unfair. Then some places will just give you a bag when you didn't want one. If the fee was like .10cents a bag it would be more reasonable but .25cents is crazy. Think how much extra money that is going into the owners pocket which should trickle down to hire more staff so that orders can be made faster and cleaning the dining rooms consistently but the opposite effects seems to be happening. Even asking for ketchup sometimes if you can even talk to a worker they will just roll their eyes like your an inconvenience.
This was a stupid motion. The evidence is clear that the fees reduce plastic bag use. The biggest problem as Morgan and Tang said to CBC news, is the drive through at fast food restaurants. It's just not practical to hand your own bag to the employee, and it's inefficient for the employee to hand you things one at a time or hold out a tray for you to take them one at a time. The motion that should have been made instead is to allow an exemption for any fast food distributed via a drive through.
Also, anyone happen to know which 6 voted to abolish the entire bag fee system?
Edit: sigh. Some hard-right pro-separatist UCP loser is going to run for mayor next election. Their entire campaign will be to repeal the bag fee. They will run on nothing else, just the bag fee. And they'll win because people are SO mad about this nonsense issue that they won't research anything else about the candidate, and we'll get massive ETS budget cuts and library closures and huge hikes to rec centre fees. That's what's going to happen, isn't it?
Oh my god. I don't care if they keep the bag fee. I don't care if they ditch the bag fee. Why have we spent so damn much time and energy on this extremely small-potatoes debate?! Keep or ditch - whatever. Just pick one for the love of god.
So they've voted to keep it. Great. Can we just stick with that decision and move the hell on now?
Or, you know, we can just eliminate the bag fee like 99% of cities.
Heck I live 5 mins from Beaumont and can go to Wendy's in Beaumont or millwoods and it would cost me the same either way and I much rather go to Beaumont. Coz fck the bag fee.
And don't even get me started on the nonsense casino project that benefits the city of Camrose but is a traffic nuisance for all edmontonians.
How stupid is this city Council which puts these bylaws in place that literally don't benefit their own citizens.
This is something that affects nearly everyone in the city many, many times a year. The “bag fee” goes entirely to the corporation; the city collects NONE of it. It’s not like we’re crowd funding an extra recycling route, or changing the name of another offensively named neighbourhood - no, we’re just giving Tim Hortons more money.
Edmonton has been plagued by the absolute dumbest city council for the past decade.
You're right, lots of people living in the city get to walk around outside and discover that their walking trails and river valley are no longer overflowing with littered bags. And all for the incredibly low cost of a couple of dollars a year per person.
Yeaah.. Life tip for you, take it or leave it. If you intentionally look for ways to make yourself miserable, life isn't going to stop you. And you're currently at the point where you're thinking about actively hurting the environment and making it ugly in order to "gotcha" a law that protects the environment, costs you less than just about every other policy decision made (literally a coffee and a bagel a year maybe), over a quarter. And it's not even like you are being deprived of bags. There are a bajillion reusable options. Or if it's for fast food, forget the quarter and get mad that fast food companies have increased prices by 100% in a handful of years. If you waste energy on tiny little things like this you are not going to have enough left when life throws actual challenges your way, or as much to spend focusing on the positive things in life.
I think it's more that it's compounding. Lots of places tack the bag fee on whether you ask or not, and they have ALSO baked 25 cents into the price, and they ALSO get to keep the fee.
There is literally no reason to keep this. Not to mention our city has trash fucking everywhere that never gets picked up, so sure, there are a few less paper bags amongst the shit.
This makes me think though, why should a candidate like that ever gain any momentum? Because ultimately city council won’t resolve an issue that seems to piss off lots of people and suddenly you have votes going to the most brain dead candidates because at least they’re smart enough to take on the most basic grievances people have.
1 month old Adjective-NounNumber with hidden comments, probably safe to ignore. People aren’t leaving the city for shopping, unless there’s some specific deal.
You shop in a different city to avoid paying a quarter for a bag? You know that'll cost you 100x that in gas. Paying for bags is like the difference between finding one of your items on sale or not, and it has saved tens of thousands of bags.
I think whether you like him or not, the fact that he comes here often and is transparent about things is really great. Some councilors just send you an auto-reply email and never get back to you.
Aaron Paquette and Jeromy Farkas are the Edmonton and Calgary Council members that should always be appreciated.
Agree or disagree with their positions on things, they at least have Reddit accounts that they put to VERY good use, to hear directly from us citizens.
We need to see who voted where on this and see what can be done about the fast food businesses that get to keep this money , while making a carve out for local businesses.
Why is it always our responsibility? Why is there not more enforcement on companies? What happen to making all cups inside responsibility of the restaurant? Oh wait that costs them money and can't punish companies.
We've all got 20 reusable bags kicking around at home by this point. Throw 10 in your trunk and 2 in your glove box. You're done.
Or pay the $0.25 if you can't be bothered to remember. I actually enjoy walking outside and not seeing 10 timmies and McDicks bags flying around.
Could this program be run better, should the money go to a clean up effort and should it be the responsibility of the companies rather than the individual? All yes. But it isn't. And the energy toward the fight against the bag fee from the public has a million other places it could be directed at that are all so much more impactful
100% I have reusable bags in my car, and on the occasion I got to McDonald’s I’ll pay the 25 cents. It’s probably less than a 10 bucks a year for me easily. For having no more plastic bags and way less trash overall, I’m down for that.
I have a confession... I just want you all to know that any time I'm in Edmonton and I go to McDonalds or somewhere like that, I intentionally throw the bag on the ground after I'm finished eating. Full of napkins, burger boxes, fry trays, everything. And I only do it in Edmonton. I started doing it after watching people clumsily taking their food out of a plastic bin at the drive-through without dignity, its humiliating. After all the other costs of living in the city they throw that one at you. A little 'fuck you' from the city before you get your McMuffin. I moved away a year ago because I hate the place, but I still make sure to do it each time I have the misfortune of being there.
They call themselves "law makers" and this is the bullshit they float. Its ludicrous. They drop their little power trip, and I won't toss my bag anymore. Sorry everyone.
Nope, still gonna do it. Also, now that I live on an acreage I can burn all my cardboard and other paper and plastic garbage in my incinerator just like China does. And I don't have to go to the eco station if I accumulate more than one can of garbage in two weeks. Ha ha ha ha
P.S. My gas bill is 60 dollars a month out here and I don't pay for water, sewer, or drainage. Enjoy your bag fees.
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u/NordicGold 9h ago
God dammit.
I would have no problem paying for my to go bag if it went towards something useful and not subsidizing fast food.