Plastic Bag Tax
Good Enough for Dublin, Why Not San Francisco?

For now, the proposed measure to levy a $.17 tax on plastic shopping bags is a "non-starter," thanks to a disinformation campaign by the American Plastics Council. Green Party Member and Board Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi proposed the measure to cut down on waste, environmental impacts and disposal costs that are ultimately absorbed by the city. No other US city has such a tax, but it's been successfully employed in Ireland, South Africa, Bangladesh, Australia, China and Taiwan. A plastic bag tax measure in now being considered in Scotland, and citizens there are generally supportive.

If it's good enough for Dublin, then why not San Francisco?

The following image and message comes from a friend now living and working in Dublin, where the plastax is $.15 or roughly $.27 in US dollars.

From my simple observations, I would have to say that the bag tax in Ireland is an unmitigated success. Not only have they reduced bag usage by 95%, but the population itself has become as mindful of its bag usage as the best environmental community in America. I went to Tesco yesterday to do my major grocery shopping for the week. In line, everyone had their own bags -- heavy plastic bags from retail stores, canvas bags with wooden handles, or specially labelled polyurethane bags (which I couldn't find to purchase). The clerk asked if I needed a bag; I said I might need one, but didn't use it.



Most of the people I've talked to were aware of the tax, but looked on it as just another tax. It's not as if the majority gave a second thought about the environment. Keep in mind that there are taxes on so many things here on so many levels. To them it was just another tax. There is some discussion in Great Britain about implementing a road tax where cars would be fitted with a special GPS box that would track their driving down to the road and time of day. Busy roads at the busiest times would be taxed the most. The idea is to eliminate other taxes associated with driving, and the intent is more about reducing traffic than raising revenue, and most of the people understand that. The people here are used to taxes, which is an aspect you'll have to overcome in your initiative.

The closest Irish "fetchandfart" equivalent to 7-11 is the SPAR chain. There's one right around the corner from my apartment in Dublin. Much smaller than c-stores in America, much busier, a lot less packaged stuff. They sell fruit (pears, apples, oranges, bananas), vegetables (potatoes, onions, cabbage, carrots), fresh bread, deli selections, milk, yogurt, cheddar (not the wider commodity known as "cheese", just cheddar). The impulse purchase section is conveniently located as a long high counter along which customers line up to check out. Employees at my SPAR are Korean, I think.

For larger shopping runs, I have gone to a TESCO store about 20 minutes away (by foot). This store has basically the same categories of products as SPAR, but with a much larger selection within each category. The male employees wear coat and ties. I had noticed when I first went there that most of the other shoppers were using their own bags - some canvas, some cloth, most used larger, more durable plastic bags from other stores. This was, of course, before I even knew about the bag tax. I had to specifically ask for a couple of bags.

I had always been saving my bags, anyway, but I quickly realized that, by practice, shoppers brought their own bags. The Asian kids at the SPAR were pretty good about asking if I needed a bag; I was kind of proud of myself the first time I could tell them I'd brought my own. Last night, I bought toilet paper, carrots, and oranges. The latter two were already in their own produce bags, anyway, and the cashier made no effort at all to put these into another bag, and he didn't ask if I needed a bag.

In the states, it used to bug me when the baggers would put everything in bags -- even things that had handles or were otherwise bagged already. My wife stitched together a cloth tube which we could hang in the pantry to stuff all these bags into and pull them out the bottom whenever we needed to reuse one. There were times when it got so full that we just threw them away.

I have done some shopping here. A couple of places put my purchases in logoed paper bags with handles. The bookstore wrapped my purchase in paper and taped it shut. At another store (Dickson's electronics) the cashier asked if I needed a bag. Since I already had one, I was relieved that I wasn't obliged to automatically get another one. On that note, however, I have to add that, from a business standpoint, you do have to make adjustments to prevent shoplifting. In America, there is a certain level of security in the fact that the purchase can be kept in the same bag as the receipt. Anything not in a bag is often labelled with a sticker so security knows it has been purchased. Items not in bags and not stickered, while not necessarily suspect, are probably the first to be questioned by security. From the standpoint of a consumer who is accustomed to this arrangement, it is slightly disconcerting to walk out of a store with purchases not in a bag.

On a similar path, this morning I saw a poster stuck to both sides of a street trash can that read something like "Don't Panic. Don't Pay. Say No to the bin tax". The only reason I paid attention to it was because I left the apartment this morning with the garbage from my morning fruit in a produce bag so I could toss it in one of the street trash cans since I still haven't found the apartment's dumpster I'm supposed to put my trash in.

For the French take on the subject, here's some stuff I found. Use babblefish or Google's page translator to get a rough translation. Bottom line: the French solution seems to be a move to mandate the use of (more expensive) biodegrabable bags instead of a tax.

www.actu-environnement.com
www.novethic.fr
www.notre-planete.info
www.novaenvirocom.ca