HOBOKEN — This week, stores across Hoboken will become BYOB: bring your own bag.

On Tuesday the city’s plastic bag ban goes into effect, making Hoboken the largest city in the state to say “no thanks” to single-use plastic bags that contribute to a global scourge of waste.

The law bans all retail locations from providing single-use plastic bags to customers, with some exceptions, and requires shops to make reusable bags available for a fee.

Nitesh Patel is a manager at Super Foods, a small deli and grocery store on Third Street. Patel said he supports the ban but expects to lose business from it because of customers who won’t remember to bring in bags each time they shop there.

"I would say 80 percent of people will get upset,” he said.

A 45-year-old man named Dan was shopping at ShopRite on Monday morning and called himself “not a fan” of plastic bag bans. Dan, who declined to provide his last name, said he’d be more supportive if stores offered an incentive, like a discount per bag.

“I think it’s going to be a big hassle,” he said. “I think it’s going to be a lot of fun to be here tomorrow when people start screaming.”

Retailers will still be able to use plastic bags for some items like frozen food, flowers, newspapers and dry cleaning. Stores must provide reusable bags free to welfare recipients. Retailers can ask the mayor and a council committee for an exemption (the request comes with a $100 fee).

ShopRite in Hoboken has spent weeks warning its customers to prepare for the plastic bag ban that goes into effect on Jan. 22.

At least 16 towns statewide have passed laws aimed at restricting the use of plastic bags, everything from an all-out ban in Belmar to plastic bag fees in Somers Point.

Banning plastic bags was a popular idea even in politically fractious Hoboken, where it was approved unanimously in June, and in Jersey City, where the council approved a similar ban with zero no votes that will go into effect in six months. There are no Republicans on either body.

The bans are less popular with Angela Logomasini, a senior fellow at libertarian think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute. Creating reusable bags comes with its own environmental costs and, if shoppers don’t wash them, there are potential health risks, Logomasini told The Jersey Journal.

A 2008 study from the UK Environment Agency found bags made to last longer than single-use plastic bags need more resources in their production and so are more likely to produce greater environmental impacts.

Logomasini acknowledged that plastic bags tend to create more litter, but she still opposes attempts to eliminate them entirely.

"Disposing of them properly is the answer, not banning them,” Logomasini said.

Terrence T. McDonald may be reached at tmcdonald@jjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @terrencemcd. Find The Jersey Journal on Facebook.