Lately there has been a few of the country’s mayors calling for an end to the ubiquitous plastic shopping bag. In San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom made the call as did Commissioner Sam Adams here in Portland. Nothing much happened once everyone realized that it would take a tax on the bags to bring an end to their use. Business pushed back. But in Ireland the answer was to bring in a tax and have a forceful environment minister give reluctant shopkeepers little wiggle room, making it illegal for them to pay for the bags on behalf of customers. The NYT ran the story -”In 2002, Ireland passed a tax on plastic bags; customers who want them must now pay 33 cents per bag at the register. There was an advertising awareness campaign. And then something happened that was bigger than the sum of these parts - within weeks, plastic bag use dropped 94 percent. Within a year, nearly everyone had bought reusable cloth bags, keeping them in offices and in the backs of cars. Plastic bags were not outlawed, but carrying them became socially unacceptable — on a par with wearing a fur coat or not cleaning up after one’s dog.”And don’t think that paper bags are the answer, yes they may degrade in landfills but more greenhouse gases are released in their manufacture and transportation than in the production of plastic bags.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 25th, 2008 at 10:44 am and is filed under Environment, Opinion, Social Change. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.