Your Stories Q&A: When I buy a paper bag at the grocery store, where does that money go?
SYRACUSE, N.Y. (WSYR-TV) – You ask, we answer!
Viewer Question: When a store charges a fee for paper bags at checkout, where does that money go? New York State? charity or environmental causes? Or back to the store?
The Your Stories Team reached out to Wegmans, Tops and Price Chopper/Market 32 to get an answer.
When New York banned plastic bags in March of 2020, supermarkets started charging a 5 to 8 cent fee. The purpose of the fee was to incentivize the use of reusable bags.
'We knew from experience, eliminating plastic bags without also charging for paper would result in customers relying on paper bags, which have greater environmental impacts than plastic bags,' A Wegmans spokesperson said in an email.
'The environmental objective in charging a nickel per paper bag was to create a deterrent to discourage customers from shifting their reliance on disposable thin film single-use plastic bags to disposable paper bags, which raise their own host of environmental concerns,' added Mona Golub, Vice President of Public Relations and Consumer Services for Price Chopper/Market 32.
When plastic bags were first banned, local grocery stores donated a portion of the paper bag fee to environmental or charitable causes.
In 2022, Wegmans posted the following on its website:
The amount collected from the paper bag charge will be donated to each store's local food bank and United Way. In 2021, the more than $1.7 million Wegmans collected and donated from the bag charge was used to increase access to wholesome food and address the most critical needs of our communities.
Now that the plastic bag ban has been in place for nearly 5 years, the grocery chains we spoke with said the paper bag charge is no longer being donated to causes. The money now covers the costs the store incurs for offering paper bags.
Both Price Chopper and Tops said the cost to make the paper bag is more than the fee the customer is charged.
'Today's rising costs are permeating every part of our economy which includes the supply cost of paper bags. The eight-cent fee of the paper bags covers a fraction of the cost of the bag itself,' said Kathy Sautter, Director of Communications for Tops.
While the charge for paper bags no longer goes to local causes, Tops said they still donate a portion of sales of its reusable bags called, Totes for Change. Sautter said Tops has donated $560,000 to charities and causes.
It is important to note that in some areas of NY, there is an actual 5-cent paper bag fee that goes to the county and state. It's part of the New York State Bag Waste Reduction Act.
Price Chopper/Market 32 sent the following information regarding the program:
'In counties that opted into Gov. Cuomo's '5 cent paper carry out reduction fee' (like Albany, Troy, Suffolk, New Rochelle, Tompkins, White Plains, NYC) the county takes 2 cents of the nickel and the state takes the other 3 cents of the nickel for its Environmental Protection Fund.'
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Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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