Bag grocery store plastic
By now, the holiday madness has hopefully left our lives and we can return to thinking about things beyond which “must have” toy to buy, how many pounds of cheese to put out for our friends and families and that jerk in the parking structure who decided to take up two stalls and half of the lane with an SUV. It is that time of year when we are supposed to have our resolutions made and firmly in place.
Most of us will resolve to spend the first two weeks of this year eating better, working out, and realizing that we spent too much on people we don’t need to spend on, and not enough on those we do. I’d like to propose that as a society we resolve to make this world a better place to be.
This is not one of those, “Help the homeless, feed the poor, cloth the naked,” types of columns. No, what I’d like to see is very simple.
I’d like to see this city, and perhaps this state, if we can get someone in the State Capitol to pay attention, to tax the use of those horrible plastic bags at the grocery store.
Those super thin, non-recyclable, plastic bags are a wonder. They can hold 30 pounds of potatoes, but if I have a carton of milk and a dozen eggs, the handles break.
On a recent road trip to Utah, we must have passed thousands of those bags on the roadside, in the divider, and trapped in chain link fences like fish in gill netting.
Now I must admit, as a dog owner, I really like the convenience factor of having a ready supply of poo-bags. And judging from the army of dog owners that I observe who do actually pick up after their pooch, the grocery bag is the preferred choice among poo-pickers.
But I can’t help but think that there is a better way for us as a society to get our groceries home from the store and pick up our dog’s poop.
Whole Foods Market makes a good attempt at social responsibility in this area. They use sturdy bags which are printed with an announcement, that if you re-use them, or any other bag, they will give you a nickel. Now a nickel is certainly not much money, but at least they are trying to motivate their customers to be more socially responsible — which is more than I can say for the other stores, who all seem to have removed their grocery bag recycle bins.
In the interest of fairness, I have to say that I have been told by the manager at the Palisades Ralphs when I brought my bags in for recycling that they have the bin in the back, and she took the bags from me and tossed them in the manager’s bay between the checkout lines. But honestly, there’s a little voice in the back of my head that says, “she just says that, takes the bags, and they end in the general trash anyway.”
I’d like to see the city of Santa Monica create a tax that I could stand behind with full support. This is one topic that I think our City Council could and should stand tall on, and for once not appear like quixotic fools. The Irish experience with these bags shows that a good tax, properly applied, can have the intended effect, and the state can benefit in two ways.
“According to the Irish Department of the Environment, shoppers used around 1.2 billion plastic bags per year before the tax was imposed in March 2002. Since then, the use has dropped by around 95 percent,” according to MSNBC.COM.
Ireland has a population of approximately 4 million people, and their usage was about 300 bags per person per year, totaling 1.2 billion bags. Three hundred bags a year sounds like a lot, until you look at what you use. I go shopping for major groceries about once a week and get four bags on average, 52 weeks a year make that 208 bags. When you add in the “just stopping in for a quick …,” plus the occasional office supply purchase, church social purchase, it is easy to get to 300 bags a year per person.
The Irish tax amount was equivalent to approximately 17 cents. This resulted in a dramatic 95 percent drop in the usage of the bags, and provided cash to the state to fund a recycling program. By my estimates the Irish tax raised $10 million in revenue, give or take.
In Santa Monica there are about 86,000 residents, not including the daytime inflow of office workers and tourists. At an average of 300 bags a year, that means about 26 million bags a year are used. We could definitely cut down on the use of those things.
I’d like to see the tax be $1 per bag and the funds earmarked for purchasing green space in the city.
I’m reasonably certain that a tax of $1 per bag would decrease the amount of the bags in significant ways almost immediately. I think a tax on them is the most logical because if we ban them outright, the lobbyists and the grocery stores will all start screaming. The media will have a field day again with our little socialist community, and again we’ll look stupid on the news. The lobbyists will be all over our City Council trying to influence the legislation, and historically, when lobbyists and politicians get together, the public loses, so we want to avoid that. But if we just get a tax passed, the lobbyists won’t argue that much, and we can get rid of this product that is a scourge on the land.
If we taxed them at $1 per bag, and that caused usage to drop by 95 percent, we would reduce our annual use by 24.5 million bags. The remaining usage would generate about $1.3 million — just enough to buy a corner lot somewhere in the city.
I know taxes are not popular. But if we did this on a statewide level, here’s what the numbers would look like: With a population of almost 36 million people, we use almost 11 billion of those bags a year, probably more. If use dropped by 95 percent and we had $1 tax per bag, we could raise $540 million.
I think it would make great legislation. It would accomplish two goals that are hard to argue with, in a non-confronta-tional manner. The argument against it, is that it would fall unduly on the lower income people. I disagree.
There are enough bags in circulation that if you can’t afford $1, you can bring your own from home.
And if you don’t have any at home, just stop along the way at any chain link fence and pick one up. (David Pisarra is a business development lawyer in the Santa Monica firm of Pisarra & Grist. He or (310) 664- 9969.)
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 3, 2006. Read the original PDF.