Should We Pay to Choose Plastic?

Dec. 9, 2003 — -- Plastic shopping bags, which cost less than a penny to produce, are about as easy-come as they come. The problem is they're not so easy-go. Now, some say it's time the bags were taxed — or even banned.

Estimates show Americans use some 14 billion plastic shopping bags every year — or about 425 bags for every American. The bags flutter from tree limbs, get balled up and stuffed under kitchen sinks and fill landfills where they take 10 to 20 years to decompose.

"Just the other day I was driving to the airport and started counting them. I stopped counting at 200," says Jerry Drake, a city council member in Bethel, Alaska, who is spearheading an effort to ban stores from handing out plastic bags to customers. "With our flat lands and high winds, it's a real problem."

So far at least three towns in Alaska have banned the free distribution of the bags to customers. Instead, shopkeepers bag groceries in paper sacks or in reusable bags that customers bring with them.

And in California, the state House of Representatives is due to take up a bill this January that proposes imposing a 2-cent tax for each of the estimated 10.8 billion plastic bags that Californians take out from stores every year.

Irish Spark

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Efforts to clear plastic bags from landscapes started abroad a year and a half ago when Ireland imposed a 15-cent tax on the bags. According to government reports last August, the move has reduced plastic bag consumption by 95 percent, or more than 1 million bags.

Taiwan and Bangladesh have since adopted a similar measures, while Australia, Scotland and the city of Shanghai, China, are also likely to begin taxing plastic bag consumers.

Mark Murray, director of Californians Against Waste, is hoping the trend abroad may spark change in this country. "Sometimes these things take a little time to percolate," he said. "The fact that we see other countries taking the initiatives, I think may urge states to take action on their own. Hopefully it will begin in California."