Do you want to be taxed for using plastic bags like the Irish are?

Question

Plastic Bag usage is a big issue. Do you want to take action or let the Government charge lots more taxes as the Irish Government does? The only real way to do prevent more taxes and charges is to use hemp or cotton bags, use canvas rucksacks, shopping trolleys or not to use bags at all.

WHY?
Plastic Bags: There are a lot of reasons given why people 'like' plastic bags. However, they still never decompose no matter how many times you use them. This is compounded when people tie their rubbish into plastic bags. If you insist on using plastic bags you will be charged high taxes for doing so. So re-use as many times as possible then take them supermarket to be recycled.
Biodegradeable Bags/Bioplastics: Polylactic acid (PLA) a biodegradable polymer derived from lactic acid. These vegetable based bioplastics biodegrades quickly under composting conditions and does not leave toxic residue. However, bioplastic have own environmental impacts caused by manufacturing and disposal of end product. Again you will be charged for these impacts and taxed
but on the plus side biodegradable bags (from potato and corn starches) are a new thriving industry

Paper Bags. Great if singly composted. In land fill can take years for layers to decompose. Still an organic material. But there is cost of production, costs to environment of pulp trees (monocultures, loss of habitat, etc) costs of recycling/disposal. Again you will have to pay for these production costs and disposal costs and taxed.
In UK instead of stop supplying plastic bags you get rewards for bringing your own. Money back, green points. Even with supermarket home delivery See Tesco. This has not been effective so we are back to taxes. In New Zealand Cloth bags are already promoted and sold in supermarkets. However this is not stopping plastic bag useage.
France is banning plastic bags 2007 others are moving towards it. The most effective is taxing plastic bag use. If we do not take action we will be taxed as the Irish are for using plastic bags. Effective as a decrease of 90% plastic bag use in Ireland.

****Jet 20 a good question For a local government the issues are that plastic bags account for 8,000 tons of waste generated in Paris each year, at a cost of more than $2 million. And burning plastic bags to dispose of them poses a health hazard. They never decompose so bulk out landfill sites. How much money is spent by your local council retrieving discarded plastic products and taking them to the tip? If these biodegrade then they would not be a problem. No litter collection, less refuse collection, less tax too. Local councils charges because they are charged by central government who in turn has to pay penalties for landfill (charges)

********Chuck T the disposer will be your local council/authority. Landfill taxes/refuse collection taxes, central government penalties etc etc. Then they pass these taxes on to YOU. The rate payer. Burning plastics is not an answer - toxins are harmful to man and environment.

***** Chuck T. What is proper disposal of plastics. No landfill space left. Can't burn. Don't decompose.??

******* AuntB93 Yes I use cotton bags too. In UK the stores have tried to reduce plastic bag usage with points, money back and in store recycling. This has not been effective enough. There are no more landfill sites. Look at current position of ITALY and rubbish due to this issue. NO I don't want to be taxed either but it is very effective method easy for Governments to apply and unless we act and reduce it ourselves (canvas or cotton bags) then they are left with ban plastic bags or tax. Public outrage or More Revenue? Wonder which your government will chose?

***AuntB93 We cannot get rid of plastics so we have to recycle them so many items are made from the recycled plastic. If they were made out of wood they would return to the earth by decomposing eventually. Again processing and disposal is expensive in cash and environmental terms.

I totally agree governments waste money, resources and creativity. I would suggest people power. If everybody took canvas/cotton bags the market would have no choice but to act responsibly. There is lot of power in market solutions that is not available to the average man. Have a look at some of the ways you are 'persuaded' to buy something. Take that choice away from the market. Put it firmly back in the hands of the person. It is so easy: everybody takes a canvas/cotton/hemp bag.

Answer 1

In Britain I used a market basket, tried to use it here in college and was told it was against store packaging policies. Then came fabric bags, I use these as often as possible. When I was in Canada, I lived near pulp mills. Don't ever let anybody tell you there's less pollution in paper! You haven't seen cyanide dumped in the water and sulphur dioxide in the air, or sugar maples and spruce trees replaced by fast growing tree weeds like cottonwood, poplar, silver leaf maples, Manitoba maples and Siberian elm. Plastic bags are reusable and recyclable, but also way overused. Our local store insists that New York law says they have to put a six-pack in one as well as all sorts of other things which have their own packaging and handles that are easier to grab and support than the flimsy bags which break. While taxes may be an incentive to change our government more often abuses such things without any real change taking place. We have bottle refunds and just look at all the bottles and cans which litter our highways, while the state uses the surplus collected as a slush fund. Stores also regularly abuse the law, charging for containers they will refuse to accept returned. Can you imagine what happens when they extend this to bags? And they'll still pack bags within bags within bags. I regularly ask for paper rather than plastic only to be told, "we don't have that", or bring my own bags to be told,"those aren't ours, we can't use them", or distinctly look for boxes to carry heavy items (they don't break or tear like paper or plastic bags) only to find any the store had are in their dumpster broken down underneath smelly and rotting trash. Most of these stores are following policies of major chains rather than small grocers that are locally owned like there were once upon a time. The chains are always looking at the bottom line which means volume, volume, volume, rapid turnover of inventory, and the necessary discouragement of theft, pilfering, and tampering (understandable, unfortunately), so things are grossly over packaged in large plastic, break resistant displays, or each individual piece separately plastic bagged and cushioned in form moulded styrofoam in plastic lined boxes with shrink wrapped plastic seals and tons of tape. Did you know it frequently takes getting through no less than four seals to open a simple bottle of pills? And once opened less than 1/3 of the bottle or vial contains pills, the rest is packing. All this goes somewhere, we pay taxes on the disposal. Yet nobody ever seems to attack this waste, they just call for more of it by yet more government regulations. The Irish and most other peoples throughout the Commonwealth, have very different attitudes to law and respecting people and the environment than Americans do. Moral education is part of their normal school curriculum. They regularly see more benefit from their taxes than we do, and are more amenable to paying and establishing taxes as a vehicle of change. It won't work here until we're ready to work at it.

Proper disposal of plastic is to RECYCLE it,and I don't mean use it as a trash bag! I've seen porches built from recycled plastic and beautiful carpets woven from it. The fact that plastic doesn't degrade and deteriorate can be as positive as it is negative. It can save an awful lot of trees, and prevent a lot of environmental poisoning. Simple answers aren't always the easiest. And we can't expect government to do it.

I live in a rural area, am no longer able to drive, and have extremely limited shopping options since my wife works nights. If I boycott, I don't shop, and the store which is overcrowded doesn't miss me in the least. So should I pay more?

Answer 2

Yes, a tax on petro-plastic bags is fine by me until a carbon pollution tax is introduced or there is an increase in the 'resource rent' on the access to natural minerals and gases .

In Australia, the tax ought to be created as part of local gov't by-laws dealing with all non-compostable waste, so that there is another (much needed) source of income for local government.

I would prefer we increased the 'resource rent' tax* onto the the organisations given access to the petroleum oil & gas from which petro-plastics are made - in pursuit of a longer-term effect on the very low price of plastics. Some of the extra revenue would be used to phase out any use-once products: styrene food containers plastic coffee cup lids.

*In Australia the rate is at 40% - it could easily be a lot higher. The companies accessing the minerals/gas still make a huge profit.

Answer 3

the central point you're making is: do we wish to take the intiaitive ourselves to do something about an environmental problem before the government is forced to step in? some people detest the idea of another government mandate, desiring legislators to 'butt out' of their private lives. others might support an initiative like this by pointing out that it can be avoided by not using the plastic bags. it's not a tax, but a fee, they might say. tobacco taxes/fees have been put under the same scrutiny in minnesota. it's largely a matter of semantics, but in either instance, it can be avoided.

whether you prefer to call it a 'tax' or a 'user fee' makes no difference. according to the BBC, the imposition has worked. plastic bag consumption has dropped. revenue has been raised. an australian environmental group is calling for a similar measure there. in time, perhaps this will stand alongside the deposit (refundable, btw) charged on plastic and aluminum soda bottles in iowa and many other us states.

my only wish is that the monies collected were put aside for environmental or ecological uses. gas taxes go to repair roads; why shouldn't plastic bag taxes be set aside to help the environment?

again (and finally), if you don't want to pay, don't use them. very simple. this is an easy way to have an impact: YOU make the choice.

Answer 4

Yes, because that's what it's going to take to get the message to the people not to use them. I've been shopping with canvas totes for a while now and have YET to see anyone else in my area doing the same. This green tip has been on TV a number of times and the canvas bags can be bought cheaply; I say tax the plastic if that's what it takes.

Answer 5

In the US the federal government has mandated that those who want to dump nuclear waste at a certain site have to do a study to prove that it will not harm the environment (in any predictable way) over the next 1 million years (seriously).

In order to avoid hypocrisy, I believe that any disposer of trash that is dumping non-biodegradable garbage (such as plastic bags) should be forced to do a similar study. If no decent decay of the waste can be shown, then a tax SHOULD be levied, and the proceeds used to assist in proper disposal (incineration? not sure what is best).

This tax should impact the consumer, so as to alter behaviors.

Answer 6

Lots of good, sound information here. As usual, Patzky on top of things with a great answer. I say: TAX THE BUGGERS. People are NOT going to deal with this on their own initiative. Just as the people scream about there not truly being any global warming, bashing Gore for his concerts. Aha! Look at all the energy they used & trash left behind! Not bothering to be informed about all the care given to energy saving & waste clean up. What a stupid idea to want to alert the WORLD about what we're doing to it. Good grief, some idiot journalist wrote a LONG article about the "aging hippies," brilliant way to bash Gore, you think? No, where the environment is concerned, I feel like 95% haven't got the IQ of room temperature, combined. The disposal company placed three recyle bins by the dumpster, one for plastic, one for glass & one for paper. So what do you think happened? The morons in this condo complex complained about the "look" of them & they were removed. I take canvas bags to the store. (We get something like three cents credit per bag, but that's not the point.) Just one thing I don't believe I saw mentioned. How about the way so many things are sealed in plastic? Cheese, meat, fish etc. (I hate this; you can't even get a knife under the plastic to open the thing.) The plastic that circles each bottle of spring water in a six pack which I carefully cut so it won't wind up choking some innocent creature? If the people who package in plastic are taxed, they'll just raise the prices. What could we do about them? Boycot everything we eat? ANY improvement would be better than nothing. Wow, am I rambling, but this is one of my big issues. It's really too much to expect people to care; garbage in garbage out. Grrr hiss...

Answer 7

Our supermarket has canvas bags that customers re-use.. and they always ask whether you would prefer not to have plastic (to try to sell you some canvas ones obviously.. but hey.. whatever works). Also there is nothing wrong with a cardboard box at my local fruit anf vegetable shop and the local butcher still uses butcher's paper. We really don't have to accept platic bags.. and frankly I would rather shop elsewhere if they have no alternatives. It is amazing how readily big business responds to public demand.... you don't need government intervention.. just a discerning public... and each individual has a real impact by the choices they make every day.

Answer 8

I take canvas bags with me when I shop, but the stores I shop in use only plastic bags, no paper, and do not provide recycling.

No, I don't want to be taxed. But why not say that any store which uses plastic bags must provide recycling? If it is done by taxes, then those of us who use canvas bags should be given a credit.

Answer 9

If plastic bags can be recycled, I see no reason for a governmental tax. There should be more emphasis on encouraging recycling of the bags. As a teacher, I reuse plastic grocery bags for lots of different reasons. Taxing the usage of plastic bags won't discourage people from using them (it's certainly not a deterrent for smoking). Promoting the idea of recycling them is a much better idea.

Answer 10

Yes! Get rid of them! Carry your own. I've seen people accept plastic bags for single items, like butter or milk. Why? Just carry it in your hand!