At about 6:30 a.m. this morning, I walked to the local Giant in Columbia Heights to pick up some eggs to make breakfast. When the cashier was almost done ringing me up, she hesitantly asked me if I needed bags. My immediate thought was “odd question”, but I responded yes. She proceeded to push a button on the register before bagging my groceries, and, to my surprise, I was charged a fee for each bag she gave me. Having lived in Boston the past three years, where we are not charged a mandatory fee for bags given to us by a store, I was annoyed by having to pay this.
I did a little research into why I was charged this fee when I got home and found this interesting graphical explanation of the “bag law”, more formally known as the Anacostia River Clean Up and Protection Act of 2009.