The Boston City Council is right to address the problem of plastic bag pollution. The bags are cheap to manufacture, but it costs the rest of us a huge amount to clean them up — not to mention the cost of having to look at them in bushes and trees across the state. The Massachusetts Food Association, which represents the state’s supermarket chains, and the Retailers Association of Massachusetts, which represents 3,000 pharmacies, convenience stores, and independent grocers, have found a neat way to force us to subsidize their businesses.
A flat ban on plastic bags, however, is not the best way to solve this problem. We should use the market. Brian Joyce is heading in the right direction. As the Globe reports:
Meanwhile, state Senator Brian A. Joyce is drawing up plans to file a bill proposing a statewide law that would charge store customers a fee if they elect plastic over other kinds of bags. If the bill passed, the fee would start at 2 cents per bag in 2008 and gradually increase to 15 cents per bag in the seventh year, according to a draft of the plan, which would apply to supermarkets that annually gross more than $1 million. The revenue would go toward the state’s recycling programs and toward improving consumer awareness of environmental problems caused by plastic bags.
The problem with this legislation, however, is that paper bags impose just as many costs on the rest of us as plastic ones. As the Globe continues, “Still, the production of paper bags produces more water and air pollution than plastic bags, according to the EPA, which promotes the use of reusable bags. Paper bags also take up more space in landfills.”
Joyce should amend his bill to cover all disposable bags — perhaps defined as all bags that cost less than X.
Some stores no doubt will want to pay the fee themselves and offer free bags. More power to them. The important point is that polluters should pay for the costs of their pollution.
Bob’s a pigovian. Cool.
This is not a “sin” tax since plastic bags are more environmentally friendly in production and recycling ability. This is a tax on everyone to avoid punishing those that actually commit the offending act, the litter bug.
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This is environmental hypocrisy at it’s finest.
I like a lot of Pigou’s ideas. The critical problem of course is as noted in the Wikipedia article you cited:
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Personally, I think in the case of plastic bags, the case has been made. I’m tired of being forced to endure Whole Foods bags all over the Charles River, and CVS bags all over the state, and paying for the collection and disposal of 100 billion plastic bags a year. Polluters like power plants and chemical factories should be made to pay for their externalities and so should the companies that make use of these bags. If JK wants to put people in jail when a bag blows out the window their car, I guess that is another approach.
Might I suggest biodegradable?
Oink! Oink!
Not to sound like a member of the VRWC, but this is one of the basic problems with liberals/progressives. You never seem to want to address the actual cause of a problem.
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So let me get this straight. You go to the store and buy something. The store puts it in a plastic bag (the more environmentally friendly product). You take your purchase home. You take out what you bought. Then, instead of doing the appropriate, responsible thing and recycle or dispose of the bag, you choose to throw it in the street, yard, etc.
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And you want to blame the bag??!!
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Why don’t we just put the blame where it belongs and fine the people who litter? If the current fines are not high enough or being applied enough, then let’s increase the fine or instruct the local police to watch out for this.
to check for saliva on the Starbucks cup in the gutter.
These bags aren’t thrown on the ground like Twix wrappers. They fly out of garbage cans, either those on city sidewalks or those from when people bring out their own trash. They also fly out of some garbage dumps.
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Are plastic bags more environmentally friendly than paper? Maybe. Maybe not. On the one hand, plastic bags use more oil to create. On the other hand, paper bags are heavier and larger, and so require more oil to transport. Plastic bags are slow-to-never decompose. Paper bags require logging, which isn’t always done in a very eco-friendly manner.
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Recycling plastic bags, while better than throwing them out, does not eliminate the energy costs of the bag. Not by a long shot.
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Allowing the store to “eat” the tax does nothing to help the problem. Additionally, taxing “per bag” is tough because it requires somebody to keep count, and the bagger and the cashier don’t always communicate well — not to mention often times the transaction (including payment) is complete before the bagging is complete.
So, how to alleviate? Ireland has used taxation to make traditional plastic and paper bags extremely expensive — so expensive that every Irishman keeps canvas or long-term-reusable plastic bags in their car or shopping trolley.
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Two cents a bag isn’t going to get it done — it’s not a high enough percentage of the cost of the items put in the bag, and so it just won’t have much of an impact on the decision — it’ll be “in the noise”. It’s just not enough for anyone to care. If you want to have an impact, make the tax ginormous. $0.25 a bag to start, and do not allow the store to cover the cost.
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I guarantee you that at $0.25 a bag, people would keep canvas bags in their car all the time, they’d use them, and we’d eliminate a foolish consumption pattern while simultaneously reducing litter dramatically.
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I’d start with stores having square footage greater than x, slowly reducing the value of x over time. I’d also encourage neighboring towns (Cambridge, Brookline, Somerville, Quincy, etc) to implement the same restriction. I’m a firm believer of local action by multiple communities “bubbling up” to state action.
It is something I tried to do, but couldn’t stick with it. I bought a couple of those reusable plastic mesh totes from Stop N’ Shop a couple of years ago. I used them maybe five or six times and then gave up. Either I would forget them at home or in the car or the bagger would put the groceries in the plastic bags first and defeat the purpose. Then came the fact that I am a dog owner and like to take my dogs out for walks and alike. Those bags are really convenient and easy for picking up. you know. Without having those bags I was buying the little plastic bags at the pet supply store that had a neet little holder that hung from the leash. I realized I was defeating the purpose.
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As far as the environmental friendly aspect of the plastic bags. I got that from a National Geographic story a couple of years ago that I found with a quick google search. According to the article:
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Paper bags could have a dramatically reduced ecological footprint. The energy consumed to create the bags could come from renewable resources, the “solid waste” could (and to some extent is) passed on to bio-waste electrical generators, the atmospheric emissions could be reduced to standard ecological cycle stuff, and the waterborne waste… well, I don’t have an answer for that.
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My point is: given a super green approach, paper bags could have dramatically reduced environmental impact, and consume virtually zero petroleum (that would be tough on transit, but possible with rail and EV trucks).
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Furthermore, they’re far less obnoxious in terms of litter. They get wet and stay on the ground, will break up in gutters, and do decompose.
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Plastic bags will always use petroleum. Furthermore, they’ll always take 100s to 1000s of years to decompose.
So paper backs are sucky now, whereas plastic bags will always be sucky.
As for “forgetting them at the car/home”, at $0.25 per bag you’d stop forgetting. As for reusing the bags with dog waste, that’s true… many people do find a way to reuse the bags one more time, either to hold their trash, their returnable bottles, their lunch, or their dog’s waste. In any case, that only reduces the bag problem by a factor of 2 at best, and that ain’t enough in the long term.
I’m starting to sound like a lobbyist for the plastic bag industry so this may be my last post defending them.
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Plastic bags are recycled into the little plastic pellets with little effort and can be reused for a number of things. Using a product that is virtually 100% recyclable is always more preferable in my opinion. But that is contingent on people actually recycling the product.
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That being said, I have to bow to you on one point.
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In addition, laziness and convenience is not a justification for not doing your part. I should try to use those bags again (if I can find them).
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One environmentalist point I disagree with in your comment:
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The reduction in the use of petroleum/oil only should not be an environmental goal. Paper bags have many other issues such as clear cutting of trees, the fact that only a small percentage of the product can be recycled, the power used to produce (usually by burning coal witch has much more harmful byproducts then petroleum), etc. My point is that the use of petroleum/oil is not an environmental concern in and of it’s self. It is the byproducts from the use, collection, transportation and storage of oil. And I am not referring to carbon dioxide (see disclosure below) I am talking about the toxic byproducts, additives, the result of incidental spills, etc. Plastics should not be viewed as “evil” or “bad” simply because they are made from oil. Many times they are the more environmentally friendly then non-oil based alternatives. Such as the discussion of paper versus plastic bags.
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Disclosure: I consider myself an environmentalist but do not believe global climate change is man induced. In a nut shell, it is my opinion, given the available information, that climate change is a natural cyclical process on our planet. I believe other theories, such as the Milankovitch cycles, are more complete explanations since it also would account for past warming and cooling cycles that paleoclimatologists have observed. Past warming cycles have been more rapid and dramatic and occurred well before man could have influenced the process. Even today’s carbon dioxide concentrations are much lower then has been estimated for previous eras (approximately 380 ppm today vs. 1,000 ppm or higher). This coupled with the logarithmic relationship between carbon dioxide and temperature rise makes it difficult for me to believe that the estimated 100-150 ppm rise in the carbon dioxide concentration observed over the past 100 years or so is responsible for global climate change.
and it’s not that I completely disagree… I just find this stuff interesting.
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As aggregate/filler or into new plastic? And how many life cycles of recycling does it get (paper is, theoretically, infinite since it biodegrades)? And what percentage of plastic bags are actually getting recycled (vs. thrown out either with the trash or holding the trash)?
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I suspect you’ll wish you could take that back. * Not using a disposable product at all is certainly more preferable. * A recyclable product is not the same thing as a recycled product. * If the recycling requires significant energy, and the resulting product doesn’t displace a particularly resource-laden product, how valuable is that recycling?
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I’m not suggesting you not use recyclable products, but I am suggesting that it is far from the end-all be-all. Furthermore, I remind you that
REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE
are in a preferential order. Reducing is always preferable to reusing, which is always preferable to recycling, which is always preferable to throwing it in the bin. So, moving leftward (using canvas, for example) is preferable.
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Strictly speaking, you’re right. But when the drilling for petroleum/oil is so taxing on local environments (as well as the natural gas burn-offs taxing on the global environment), the shipping of oil by pipe damaging to long swaths, the shipping of oil by barge so dangerous and susceptible to leaks, etc… it’s hard to not connect the use of petroleum with environmental problems above and beyond global warming. You acknowledge that these problems exist, but pretend as if there’s no connection between the two in reality — similarly, you ignore when I point out that “green” paper bags (not the ones used now) could be cleaner when you essentially rewrite my list of ways that paper bag production is environmentally costly.
The disclosure should be left for another thread.
Let me start by acknowledging that the Reduce, Reuse, Recycle model if definitely the preferred order of how things should be done. The use of canvas/plastic mesh reusable bags is the preferred path. But as I pointed out, it proves difficult/inconvenient. If people like you and I who actually think about these things aren’t doing it, it is a hard case to get people who, as I just fought with this one beatch while walking my dog, throw their cigarettes on the ground and go “what, you don’t own the road” to go along with.
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I did find this page from the US EPA on paper or plastic. Some of the highlights:
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I think this answers some of the questions regarding recycling of the plastic versus paper. The end result of both this page and our discussion is that we should find a way to push people to using a reusable bag.
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As far as the second point you addressed. I simply meant when compared to a product that is general only 15-30% recyclable.
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As far as your last point. I think this is likely the result of poor word choose on my behalf. The only point is was trying to make was that the use of petroleum
is not the problem. If we could find better ways to collect, store and transport it there is little down side other then it being nonrenewable by current technologies. But I will add that people I know from school are currently working on that at places like WHOI, MIT, Yale, etc.
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People like me are doing it. I haven’t gotten a plastic bag from a store in months and get one paper bag about once a week so I have a place to put my paper recyclables.
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This is made easier because I ride a bicycle instead of drive a car — I have a backpack, and I can’t buy much more than what a backpack can hold since my rear rack got broken and I haven’t replaced it yet.
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But yes, we are circling.
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I do have one quibble with your quote… “[paper bags] takes up a lot more landfill space.” They do at t=0 when they are deposited, but since paper bags are 100% decomposable and plastic bags aren’t, eventually the plastic bag must take up more landfill space than the plastic bag.
I haven’t gotten a proper plastic grocery bag. I do get some of the “fresh produce” bags for things that don’t do well like broccoli or grapes. I do tend to “bag together” things like bell peppers at my local market, since they’re smart enough to ring them up correctly even if they have different PLUs.
Because of the leach ate from landfills, we have changed the requirements for their construction. I have worked on several landfill capping projects. We now cap them with a layer of clay and other impermeable membranes that do not allow air and water to circulate in the pour spaces between the trash. This has many positive effects for the environment. However, one of the negative aspects is that it now creates an anaerobic environment for the waste that has been landfilled. The bacteria that normally acts to break down the paper can not live in an anaerobic environment. The end result is that paper and other degradable material now exists in the landfills for nearly the same amount of time.
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I believe this was mentioned in the EPA quote:
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Bacteria are a wonderful thing. We often use them to clean up gasoline spills that have contaminated soil and groundwater. But they usually have very tight tolerances they can work within. There is currently research underway to engineer a bacteria that could work in an anaerobic environment to break down trash. You could spray it on prior to capping the landfill. So eventually paper may take up less space in landfills but for now it takes up more. So again the answer is Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.
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This was a interesting discussion. I know you and I disagree on my social issues but this appears to be an area where we agree. I am going to give the canvas/mesh reusable bags a go again, thanks to this discussion.
And we all know what lovely substances come in glass bottles — champagne, scotch, and beer, among other things.
but dam you for making me think about having my first glass of scotch before noon. Remember what happened last time I had too many liquid lunch scothes.
I knew that only things “near the top” got broken down reasonably quickly, but I didn’t realize that nowadays virtually nothing is “near the top” due to clay, etc.
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Bummer.
But I came accross this article this morning and throught about this post. It is about recycling the plastic bags into railway cars.
We use 90% of the plastic bags we get to pick up after our dogs. If we did not get plastic bags from our shopping, we would have to buy them. Paper bags just don’t work for this purpose (and I have tried!), and no one is going to lug around a bucket and shovel while walking their dog.
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I would use biodegradable bags if I could get them, but they are rarely available. I guess there isn’t a big enough market yet.
if you didn’t get free plastic bags from your grocer 😀
And would be a good way to ensure immediate, drastic turnover among our elected officials.
Maybe you’re starting to turn me on this topic;)
it ain’t likely to be popular. Such is the problem with environmentalism — everybody wants their air clean and their parks green, but they want other people to sacrifice some part of their lifestyle and convenience to get there.
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It’s a tough problem indeed.
There is no inherent trade off between the environment and the economy. There are solutions that can be great for our local economy and great for our environment. A better handle on the negative externality of plastic bags might be one of them: Massachusetts companies may develop environmentally friendly bags, tourism may benefit, people may even shop more because they will be freed from the subsidy they currently are forced to pay to the bag-pollution-generators. We need jobs for Massachusetts. Companies that specialize in environmental technology, which plays to many of our strengths, are one way we can get them. We should support policies that will encourage them.
regarding biodegradables
…here in Germany, it is usual that people take their shopping bags (Einkaufstaschen) with them when they go grocery shopping. The grocery stores are quite willing to sell you Einkaufstaschen, but most people bring their own. We most certainly do.
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At the other end of the digestive spectrum, here in our little town in Germany outside of Munich, not only do they have an extensive recycling system, but they also have a provision whereby, we (the town) will pick up (for free, based on the number of units paid for by your property tax), X numbers of trash containers. If you have more trash that you want disposed of, you have to buy bags from the Gemeinde (the city hall), at the rate of some 8 Euro per bag. (The bags are pretty large, so it isn’t a big imposition).
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The point is, here you get a base trash hawl-away, and if you want more hawled away, you pay for it.
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Two BTWs
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BTW 1: Wellesley, our town in the USofA doesn’t provide any trash pick-up. Despite our paying nearly US$7000 a year in property tax.
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BTW 2: I am not exaggerating when I say that the Germans at least here make extensive use of the recycling areas. I know that Germans have a reputation for “Alles in Ordnung” but in this case it is true.
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Note going up
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JK @ Thu Apr 26, 2007 at 12:17:03 PM EDT
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Why don’t we just put the blame where it belongs and fine the people who litter?
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Just to let you know, there have actually been proposals to tax retail establishments at or around which people litter or more likely to litter. Das heisst, McDonalds and other fast food establishments. The litterers are not going to be held for their littering, but the companies could be held for enticing them to litter.
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Do you know what became of any of that? Absolutely nothing.
… and then you proceed to tell us how we should NOT use the market. You are addressing a “market failure” — this is the whole point of the concept of externalities — they are real costs, social and economic, that arise because “the market” (that almighty god of the capitalists) does not charge the full cost (or pay for the full benefit) of certain consequences of economic activity.
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What you are proposing is a tax. Taxes are done by governments, not by “the market.”
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This may be a small point, but let’s use language carefully, since we have all learned from the right how important that can be.
I am saying that we should impose a tax on plastic bags (see headline) to compensate society for the cost of the pollution their use creates. Then we should let individual people make their preferences known through the market: they can decide whether they want to pay for the bags now that their full cost is included in their price. What we should not do is just ban plastic bags. That will get rid of bags in trees, but it might be worse for the environment overall than just doing nothing, and it doesn’t address the fundamental problem of pollution caused by the use of non-renewable bags. It also is unlikely to generate any new jobs for Massachusetts in the renewable bags business.
If I don’t get free plastic bags, I’m going to have to start paying for bin liners. Forget that.
Are you saying that this proposal is supported by Osama Bin Liner?
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If there are no bags in the trees, the terrorists win!
Its done wonders for aluminum cans. Why not plastic containers of all shapes and sizes? Then you only pay the tax if you don’t recycle it. 2 or 3 cents might be enough.
you know, in certain neigbhorhoods there is pollution from, you know, bullet shell casings. maybe one day the council can get around to that….
You could just as well say that every time the City Council does something other than try to deal with violence issues. The mayor and City Council need to address a range of quality of life issues in their work, not just one. In any case, what exactly do you expect them to do in any case?
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5 million for the IT infrastructure supporting the government Department of Bag Security!
I’ve been using canvas bags since I lived in England almost 20 years ago when they would charge for bags at the grocery store, which is still the case in many places in Europe (not a tax, but a charge). I got used to the bags and realized that they are also much easier to carry (especially if you take public transportation). I’m sure over the years I’ve saved thousands upon thousands of bags from being used. I take them to all kinds of stores.
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At Whole Foods I get a nickel back for using the bags. At Trader Joe’s I get a raffle ticket for some prize (I’ve never won).
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I have about 10 bags, so I always have extras in the trunk of my car. When I travel abroad I have a super little bag that folds up (into a little bag of its own) that is smaller than a wallet and fits into my purse. It is nylon and holds a surprising amount of things, and it’s weightless.
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Occasionally I buy something on the fly and get a plastic bag, but I estimate I bring fewer than 50 plastic bags a year into my house, and those get used for garbage.
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You get used it to, and with the right incentive/disincentive, it works.