If you’ve shopped outside Richmond in recent years, you may have encountered the bag tax — a small fee that’s become a familiar part of the checkout routine. With City Council’s approval last week, Richmond will join the list next year.

I first encountered the tax in Northern Virginia when a self-checkout kiosk screen asked if I wanted a bag for my items. Normally, that’s a no-brainer— but that extra nickel made me pause. If I carried everything to the register in my arms, I figured I could manage getting to the car the same way — and keep a little extra change in my pocket.

It’s not a major tax, but the potential environmental savings is worth the effort. A nickel is a small price for a cleaner city. Single-use bags often end up littering our streets and waterways, polluting our ecosystems and harming wildlife. They’ve been a problem for years, and we’re glad to see Richmond joining the communities taking action.

We also see the other side of the issue. In many African American households, plastic grocery bags are more than single-use items. They line trash cans, carry lunches, transport homemade plates from church cookouts and store memories in hall closets. They are woven into the fabric of daily life. To toss one away thoughtlessly would be, for some, a waste.

That instinct — to save, to reuse, to stretch the value of something small — isn’t frugality. It’s survival. It’s the product of generations who were taught to make a dollar out of 15 cents, because often that’s all there was. When you’ve inherited that mindset, it’s hard to see a plastic bag as trash.

It’s a tool. A resource. A backup plan.

We understand the bag tax is supposed to reduce litter and there’s a real environmental cost to our disposable culture. But who’s being asked to carry the weight of that problem? It’s not the corporations that shrink-wrap the things we buy and flood the market with single-use plastics. It’s the elder on a fixed income who walks to Family Dollar and doesn’t own a car — or a canvas tote.

Back in 2023, a group in California called the Responsible Recycling Alliance raised similar concerns, warning that new bag tax legislation would disproportionately hurt Hispanic and Black families. They weren’t alone. Economists and social advocates alike have pointed out that so-called “sin taxes” often hit the poorest the hardest—even when the intention is good.

Richmond’s council members say the funds will help distribute reusable bags to those who need them most and that’s a start.

If we’re serious about protecting the planet, we also need to protect the people who’ve been doing their part all along—quietly recycling, reusing and passing on wisdom about waste not, want not and what not. Richmond needs to make sure this tax works for the people who’ve been living sustainably long before it was trendy.