🚀 go-pugleaf

S.F. considers 17-cent tax on grocery bags
By Traci Watson, USA TODAY
It could cost grocery shoppers 17 cents a bag if they want paper or
plastic in San Francisco, one of the first U.S. cities to attempt a
grocery bag fee aimed at helping the environment.

City officials are considering a proposal that would put a tax on
supermarket bags, and it's likely that many stores would try to pass
the extra cost on to consumers. The measure is primarily being pushed
by environmentalists who view plastic grocery bags as a menace, not as
a modern marvel of convenience.

"Folks take the free plastic bag for granted," says Mark Murray of
Californians Against Waste, which supports the proposal. "The idea is
to use the fee to communicate there is a dollar-and-cents impact."

Plastic bags, which account for 90% of the city's grocery sacks and
cause its recycling machines to jam, aren't the only target of the
tax. Both paper and plastic bags litter the city's streets. As a
result, according to a study by the city's Environment Department, the
50 million paper and plastic grocery bags used in San Francisco each
year cost the city 17 cents apiece for cleanup and other costs, adding
up to $8.5 million.

If the measure is enacted, San Francisco will once again be at the
forefront of environmental activism. Murray knows of no other city
that charges a grocery-bag fee, and he's hopeful that other cities
will eventually follow.

But the grocery and plastic industries say city officials should bag
the idea.

The fee "is an incredible amount of money to a consumer," says Paul
Smith of the California Grocers Association. "Before you know it,
that's an extra dollar to your food bill every time you go shopping."

The city's Commission on the Environment will consider the idea today.
If it agrees to the resolution, which is non-binding, it would have to
gain approval of the mayor and the city's Board of Supervisors to take
effect.

Murray says plastic bags also add to the growing amount of plastic in
the ocean, which chokes marine life. The resolution claims that U.S.
bag making demands 14 million trees and 12 million barrels of oil �
the main ingredient in many plastics � each year. The American
Plastics Council and the American Forest & Paper Association say those
numbers are inaccurate.

Only supermarkets grossing more than $2 million a year would pay the
fee. The stores would keep half the money for programs to discourage
use of disposable grocery bags. The city would get the other half.

Murray says people could cut bag consumption by declining a bag when
they buy one item and by taking reusable bags to the market.

The plastics industry argues that the proposal would come at a high
cost for little benefit. Eliminating the use of 50 million plastic
bags would save only 2,100 barrels of oil, says Rob Krebs of the
American Plastics Council.

That's "equivalent to taking (roughly) 90 SUVs off the road," Krebs
says, a "very minute number compared to the 600,000 to 1 million
vehicles in San Francisco."

The San Francisco proposal is similar to other measures in Ireland,
South Africa, Bangladesh, Australia, China and Taiwan, which ban
plastic bags or charge a fee to use them.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2004-11-22-sf-grocerybags_x.htm

Environmental effects 	 	


Impacts of disposable grocery bags on the environment:


Millions of trees were cut to make the USA's paper bags.

Millions of barrels of oil a year are required to make the USA's
plastic bags.

Bags stack up in landfills.

Plastic bags add to plastic debris in the ocean, which hurts marine
life.

Source: San Francisco Department of Environment


===
     "Kunal Trow, anyone?"  -- Me, from his favorite video game