Posted on 08/26/2008 6:19:16 AM PDT by ProtectOurFreedom
California, with its long coastline littered with white bags, needs a better approach, one that encourages people to make informed choices between disposable and reusable bags. Here are the options:
• A piecemeal, voluntary approach by stores.
• A hard-line approach, such as a ban.
• A simple, market-based solution: a consumption tax. Ireland has taken this route. Since 2002, consumers who forget to bring a bag are charged a 15-cent tax at checkout. Before the tax, Ireland's 3.9 million people used 1.2 billion bags per year. Now it's 230 million. About $9.6 million was raised from the tax in the first year, earmarked for a fund for environmental projects such as recycling refrigerators.
A bill before the California Legislature would adopt Ireland's market-based approach. Beginning in January 2010, Assembly Bill 2769 (by Assemblyman Lloyd Levine, D-Van Nuys) would require California stores to collect a 25-cent tax on all disposable bags, paper or plastic. Stores would get 5 cents for every plastic bag and 10 cents for every paper bag. The balance would go to a Bag Pollution Fund to clean up the litter caused by single-use carryout bags and encourage the reduced use of single-use disposable bags.
The bill has the support of the grocery and retail industries, which currently subsidize the use of disposable bags.
AB 2769 would provide shoppers with a choice: Bring reusable bags or pay the true cost of a disposable bag. That should shift market behavior – and help the environment, too. The Senate should pass AB 2769, and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger should sign it.
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
Have you noticed how leftists now couch all their totalitarian initiatives as "simple, market based" and as "consumer choice" as a way to fool us sheep?
If charging lazy people for not bringing their own shopping bags helps stem the tide of refuse we generate everyday, that ain't necessarily a bad thing.
Though, it should be something the stores do without the Gubmint getting in on the act.
We are required to put our garbage in plastic bags. I use my grocery bags. So now I have to go out and buy garbage bags?? This is a marketing scheme....and it’s stupid.
If charging lazy people for not bringing their own shopping bags helps stem the tide of refuse we generate everyday, that ain’t necessarily a bad thing.
Lazy? I actually like getting the plastic bags from the store so that I use them as garbage bags.
Please step over to the window and pay the "speech with attitude" assessment.
;-)
I do the same thing — use plastic bags as garbage bags. And I’m already green — I have green eyes. :-)
Those d@mn flimsy plastic grocery bags are all over the place around me - stuck to signs on the side of the roads, in the weeds, up in the trees, all in the woods around the river and everywhere else. They’re a mess and an eyesore. It costs me tax money for Public Works to clean them up. As far as I’m concerned this falls under the heading of “even a stopped clock is right twice a day.”
Plastic bags I receive at the grocery store are recycled by taking the bags to the local food bank. The food bank is always looking for more plastic bags.
But I reuse the bags as trash bags.
The stores I go to, give us the bags. Keeping them in the car and bringing them to the store is stupid....how?
“California, with its long coastline littered with white bags,”
I question that statement. I live near the coast in CA and don’t see grocery bags littering it. We use each bag at least two or three times, for lunch (carrying, NOT eating) and to line small trash containers.
We usually took the bags when we were doing bulk shopping, but declined them when we were making the mid-week purchases of fresh produce and milk. This gave us the bags we needed to collect trash, but still helped us cut down on the use with the small incentive offered by Daiei.
Not talking about HDPE plastic bags. The bags I speak of are a woven synthetic material that have handles. They fold up flat to the size of a paperback, unfold to about 1'x1'x2' and hold a lot of weight.
The one I use at my local wine merchant is compartmented and they gave it to me gratis as long as I bring it back to use for carrying my purchases.
I know the HDPE plastic bags we're used to are handy for trash, etc....but what did we do before we had them...say 1970?
How the heck is a tax a “market-based approach”?
It is a “government-revenue-based approach”.
Awesome. That’s what I call thinking.
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