Blue collar workers and other folks who eat meals at McDonald's and other fast-food restaurants in Vancouver are now finding a couple of new fees added to their bills, thanks to the City.
Council passed a by-law in 2020 that mostly centred around the outright banning of single-use plastic bags in retail outlets, but it also included new rules around paper bags, cups, straws, etc. The new rules went into effect on Jan. 1, 2022.
One of those rules is that any and all businesses who operate in Vancouver are required to charge 15 cents per paper bag that they put their goods into before you take them out the door (or have them passed to you at a drive-thru window). You can, of course, choose to bring your own bag and not be charged a fee.
Another rule is that every single-use cup now comes with a 25 cent fee. Again, most places allow you to bring your own to-go mug for coffee, tea, etc.
For the average person who goes to McDonald's for a cheap and quick breakfast, lunch, or dinner, this means an extra 40 cents will be added to their bill.
Unless, of course, a drive-thru customer would like to have a Quarter Pounder and fries handed to them through their car window, then somehow find a suitable place to put those items inside their vehicle while simultaneously trying to convince the cashier to break their employer's rules and fill their to-go mug with Coke.
Where does that extra 40 cents go, you ask? Surely into some sort of fund to help make our city greener?
Nope. It goes directly to the vendor; the new fees are simply meant to try to discourage people from using single-use items by penalizing them with a fee.
So, let's say McDonald's pays five cents for a cup and two cents for a bag, they're now making an estimated 33 cents on each of the thousands of sales they make each day in our city.
You've got to hand it to our current City Council for always looking out for small business owners. The mom-and-pop shops like McDonald's that are just trying to make a go of it in this increasingly expensive city we live in.
