"By charging a nominal 5-cent fee for each paper and plasticbag, customers become incentivized to either forego a bag or bring a reusable bag rather than pay the 5-cent fee, " said Keith Anderson, interim director of the district's Department of the Environment, who came to Trenton to testify about the bill.
It takes four times as much energy to produce a paperbag than it does plastic, and when they're dumped away in landfills, paper bags don't biodegrade any better than plastic.