Take after our forefathers! It's time to throw all of the shopping bags you can find into the San Fransisco Bay...
Well, if I do the math right, the city is apparently spending $8.5 million on year on disposal costs of grocery bags. What the article doesn't say is where the funding for that is coming from currently, or what they plan to do with the additional tax revenue. For example, are they planning on using the bag fees to reduce garbage pickup fees charged to residential customers, cut sales taxes, etc.? If so, then I say go for it! Maybe Houston should even do the same thing. But I doubt this...it is San Francisco after all...they're probably going to use the extra jack to bloat city government even more, right? So in that case, yes, a bag tax revolt is in order! I also love the way they blame evil businesses for the problem...never mind that consumers like plastic bags...classic.
We use our own bags when we shop....Whole Foods will give you like a $0.05 discount on your bill for each bag...clearly will take a lot of trips to pay for the bag, but no need to use some mand plastic bags...though we still do get a few each month from overflow, or eggs that need to be packed seperately, etc.
And people wonder why it is called the People's Republic of California. What next, tax the air you breathe? They wonder why the producers are leaving the state in droves......
I saw some hippy looking woman using her own bags in the grocery store the other day. FREAK! Who's going to work in Behad's refinery if we quit using plastic?? She's destroying jobs! When I was working in Munich they charged for grocery sacks. Most people brought their own, except for the ugly American (me) who didn't know any better. They have the right idea, though. If you want to reduce consumption of grocery sacks, either charge for them separately or offer a discount for recycling. Right now I'm sure they simply price the cost of the bag into your overall food bill in the form of higher prices.
They already charge an 8 dollar tax in California for high end electronics ranging from TVs to recievers. That's to pay for the recycling costs once they end up in the dump. Plastic grocery bags are more difficult to recycle than bottles or containers. Because of their uses, they usually end up in garbage dumps and will stay there for another couple hundred thousand years. Frisco is 2 steps ahead of the previous recycling tax law.
A committed free-marketeer/libertarian like yourself should be jumping for joy at this news, it forces people to internalize the cost of bag recycling/clean up/etc rather than arbitrarily allocating them among taxpayers. So instead of you paying for bag recycling/clean up/disposal via higher sales or property taxes since some some anal soccer mom decides to triple bag her Sunny Delight lest it ruin her Lexus SUV's floor mats, she gets to bear that cost and factors it into her decision making. It's more efficient, and you no longer have to pay for others wanton bag use or waste, you now get to choose which costs to incur, rather than having big brother goverment do it for you. Huzzah for choice!
We have a recycle truck in our neighborhood that comes by and empties big blue plastic boxes full of, I thought, 'anything that tears'. If you put plastic bags in there, they take them out and leave them laying on the curb.
As long as they keep driving the SUV's to the supermarket, I'll be just fine. Thanks for your concern Sincerely, Your PACE union brother. PS. Refineries produce fuels from oil, chemical plants produce plastics.
TheFreak - many supermarkets have plastic bag recycling cans near their entrances. If you can't reuse them, this is the next best thing.
