Plastic bag ban a problem on takeout orders
NORWALK — The new city ordinance banning singleuse plastic bags is only a week old and has already caused some confusion.
How can restaurants charge the 10cent paper bag fee if it’s not directly dealing with the customer? What if the deliveries are done through a thirdparty app, such as Grubhub and UberEats? Does this cause the restaurant to be in violation of the city’s plastic bag ban?
That was the situation Nathalia Gonzalez of Antojos Restaurant on New Canaan Avenue encountered, now that the city’s ban on singleuse plastic bags has entered its second week.
“Many other restaurants have a business relationship with certain food order apps,” Assistant Corporation Counsel Brian Candela wrote in a letter to the Ordinance Committee. “These food
order apps take the order and are paid directly by the customer ... since the restaurant does not receive money from the customer, it cannot charge for the paper bags used. The restaurant is paid by these apps at the end of the month.”
The city’s ordinance requires that establishments charge 10
cents per paper bag in an effort to incentivize customers to bring their own bags whenever feasible. Stores that sell food that is not fully wrapped, such as McDonald’s with fries, are exempt from the charge. Gonzalez said that while their food is fully wrapped, they don’t have control over what the contractor uses to deliver the food.
“As an example, Antojos packages their food in cardboard boxes prior to being picked up,”
Candella said. “From their experience with these food service apps, they do not control how these independent contractors transport the food. Recently, they have offered paper bags to these independent contractors to deliver their meals.”
Gonzalez said she and other businesses have been giving out paper bags, but haven’t been charging for them, which technically causes them to violate the ordinance.
“A lot of these (drivers) they come from out of New York, they come and they make very good money,” Gonzalez said, stating that the drivers don’t always know what each town is doing.
Council members recommended that she and other restaurants encountering similar issues add the charge on automatically for delivery items, similar to automatically adding gratuity for a party larger than six people.
Candela said he would also check in with other cities that have banned plastic bags, like Stamford, to see if there were other suggestions they could offer local businesses.
Committee Chairwoman Eloisa Melendez thanked her for coming forward so they could address the issue.
“You’re obviously not the only one dealing with it,” she said.