Um, because it is pretty plainly a Pigouvian tax? It is not “a passing on of the cost to the consumer” when the government mandates this passing on. Moreover, not all costs assessed to suppliers end up being passed on to the consumer, as, classically, real estate taxes are not, under a fixed supply of rental properties, passed on to tenants.
I guess the shorter answer to your piqued interest would be: Because I know at least the first thing about economics.
Which is why they should be banned/eliminated altogether, not just charged for, imo. Enough don’t give a crap and the impact of a small fee is not enough to persuade them to change their habits. Perhaps a program through businesses to offer a few free reusable bags to customers THEN begin making them BUY a reusable bag if they don’t have one, as part of a trainsition to a no disposable bags policy. Not that .99 or so for a bag would impact much on those like me who spend several hundred a month on groceries, but at least I would ten have one in my possession and MIGHT have a higher incentive to remember to bring it next time.
B.S. The fact is that under current U.S. economics, the government/taxpayer subsidizes all sorts of wasteful, inefficient practices…consumers don’t pay the actual costs because businesses often don’t. But we ALL pay in the end, through, ironically, higher taxes and bail-outs, clean-ups, and health-care and food stamps for underpaid employees, etc…If we, as consumers, paid the ACTUAL costs at the supermarket or elsewhere, we would quickly say, “Geez, this ground beef is WAY too expensive!” and demand an alternative. Which would result in either a wave of vegetarianism or a shift in production methods to those which required less resources and produced less waste) A TRUE free market, regulated by the PEOPLE. And a benefit for workers, consumers (as if we all aren’t BOTH) AND the environment. Because what is rational works. We just currently don’t encourage that sort of rational thinking, because it all comes down to the bottom line and if doing something stupid and wasteful pays due to it being subsidized, it keeps getting done.
Your “knowledge” of economics (and of government, which in this country, is representative of the people, at least in theory; just a way for “the people” to implement their will) is sorely outdated.
I hate plastic bags for groceries. But I reuse them all the time, for can liners and such.
I love the old school big brown paper bag. I shop at Aldi, and you can load three times the groceries in those bags. Plus, once the groceries are put away, they make great garbage bins - I have them in at least three rooms of my house. They hold a lot of stuff, stand up on their own and are super easy to pitch when full. I also use them for things like storing old clothes (just roll the top down and staple), book covers (just like high school!), and make simple work of wrapping something for storage or mailing. I am happy to pay the 5 cents a bag at Aldi, since I can definitely get more than 5 cents of use out of them.
For those who use reusable bags, I have to ask - how big are your grocery trips? We go once or twice a month, and for a family of four, we usually have 5-6 big brown bags. We would need to buy and carry 15 of the reuseable bags.
Unless they can design a bag that’s as big and strong as my brown paper bags, I have no use for reuseables. Besides, paper makers are the biggest stewards of tree farms, right?
I own about 8 canvas bags (and they are FAR stronger than any plastic or paper bag I’ve used…never had one break on me yet) and that is usually quite ample for a bi-monthly grocery trip of a few hundred dollars worth of stuff.
A good tip for remembering them is to unload at home then put them BY THE DOOR and put them in the car on the next time out.
Like using disposable bags, it is all about habit and training ourselves. If we are not adaptable enough for THIS we might as well just pack it in.
How big are these Aldi bags?? The reusable bags I have vary in size, but some are the size of the standard brown grocery sack like you get at Whole Foods.
I think I have 10 or so. I love them. They get used for everything - grocery store, farmers’ market, library, beach, picnics, etc. DC is planning to start taxing plastic bags, so I imagine that it’ll be coming our way in MD soon. For what it’s worth, most of the discussion around here is that plastic bag litter is harming the waterways, especially the Anacostia River.
A few posters have mentioned the practice of having a fee per bag at Aldi. I began shopping there as a broke college student and continue to shop there periodically to restock staples.
When I first shopped there in the 80s, the only bags available were paper at $.02, IIRC. Most folks picked boxes up as they shopped, the benefit working both ways: they didn’t pay for bags and the store didn’t pay as much for cardboard disposal, coming full circle and passing the savings back to the customer.
With the advent of the sturdy plastic bags with handles for a few more cents, more people (especially those on foot) began buying and reusing them. No regulation involved. The motivation was strictly that of the consumer wanting to save a few pennies.
Now when I shop there, a lot of people carry their own reusable cloth bags, from Aldi or another store. Still a win-win proposition. The point being, that their model is a proven example of one that works.
Like other posters, I carry the cloth bags with me (thanks for the reminder to launder them more regularly, Harmonious Discord) and not only are there the obvious enviornmental benefits, but they hold much more and are easier to tote up the steps to my apartment. Some even have a stiff bottom, so no more having to chase yogurt cartons and apples around the bed of the truck. 
OMG yeah…you can fit SO many things into the big brown bags vs the titchy plastic bag that you can only fit a tiny amt in. Former bagger here BTW
It has worked here in Ireland by and large. You don’t see nearly as many plastic bags floating around on the wind or in rivers and such. People really begrudge having to pay 22c for a plastic bag though. Most people who are going grocery shopping or what not usually bring bags from home. The only problem is that if you’re selling an item that is heavy paper bags are often inadequate.
Some people, like me, actually do get a good amount of use out of plastic bags. We use them to put in the smaller trash cans in the bathrooms, to clean up the cat poop, and most importantly for putting stinky diapers away. I do use cloth bags, but not always. There are also times that I don’t ask for a bag if it’s just one or two items. However, I do like the idea of being able to get them when I need them.
You want to reduce waste? What about the “free” paper I get every week that I’ve asked numerous times to stop giving to me? Or all of the stuff I get in the mail? I’ve got two full paper bags of stuff to recycle over the last week, most of it from stuff I don’t want. But you don’t see anyone pushing to stop that kind of crap.
Well, yeah, nobody really likes that, either, but it’s a different kind of waste. It’s biodegradable and it doesn’t clog waterways or kill animals. You don’t see (well, I don’t) junk mail all over the environment the way you do plastic bags because plastic bags can spread themselves over a much larger area once the wind catches them.
Nobody is saying that they aren’t useful. They are, and like you say, more so than junk mail. But the inappropriate disposal of the bags is causing an appreciable environmental crisis that could be significantly reduced with some controls. I don’t necessarily support an all-out ban, but I think charging shoppers a nominal fee to use them would be an incentive for many to use fewer or switch to something more environmentally sound. The funds generated from this fee could be used for local clean-up projects, consumer education, and improving waste management.
My store was an early adopter of the pay for plastic bags policy and boy, has that ever been fun. Every employee in the store has been abused at some point by a customer who is outraged at being charged 20c for a sturdy plastic bag made of recycled material that (they claim) is biodegradable AND has 5c of its purchase price donated to a wildlife charity. My sympathies are with them a fair bit - I would support it more if it was a tax that went to environmental programs, but I don’t like a private company profiteering under the pretense of “saving the planet”.
On the plus side: People ask for a bag for their two items, I explain it will cost them, they decide they don’t actually need a bag after all. In those cases, the policy is doing what it was intended to do.
Some people have begun to bring their reusable bags with them.
Some people praise us for taking action to help the environment.
What I hate: Either I trust my customers to have noticed the posters, signs and displays - including the one at my register - that all inform them that we started charging for bags last December, only to find they haven’t at the end of the transaction at which point huffiness ensues (particularly if they’ve paid by credit card and have no cash on them),
-or-
I try to make them aware that they need to buy a bag if they need one while I’m ringing them up and they get annoyed at me because they think I’m a plastic bag shill for the company. Seriously, I’m not trying to sell you bags! I’m just trying to make sure this isn’t going to be a nasty surprise to you after you’ve already paid for everything else!
Ban plastic bags? That’s just too god damned dumb for words. Plastic bags are handy, I save them in my car, under all the sinks, in the broom closet - they come in handy all the time. These ostensibly disposable, one-use bags see at minimum two uses and probably more. That’s not wasteful.
The argument that paper products are not environmentally friendly is ludicrous. It’s all well and good to recycle paper, we use a lot of it and it makes a lot of sense from a waste-disposal standpoint. However, paper is made from pulp. Unless you’re producing really high quality paper, you don’t log for pulp. Pulp is the slash that would be burned or lopped up and left after sawing a strip - might as well make a few bucks on it.
The free market is good. Utilizing renewable resources is good. Conservation is good. Preservation is bad. Taxation as a penalty is bad. A government so arrogant and intrusive as to dictate the minutiae of my grocery shopping is BAD.
Given the existence of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, I’m all in favor of banning every single use product that isn’t biodegradeable or widely and readily recyclable (with exceptions for the few things that truly are vital, like medical supplies, until effective replacements are developed.)
Or use taxes and/or incentives to gradually phase them out. Just get rid of them.
As for paper product Wisconsin has an enormous toxic waste problem in the Fox River because of paper mills and their waste. It will never be cleaned up, just remain part of the mud at the river bottom.
To be fair, I suspect much of the toxic problem is a legacy from when they were ALLOWED to dump nasty shit in the river. I am not sure producing or recycling paper products is INHERENTLY a toxin producer.
Maybe a paper expert here can enlighten us.
Good point. This presentation by Capt. Charles Moore illustrates the extent to which plastic has invaded ocean ecology. The fact that total clean-up is impossible at this point is distressing to say the least. Even if we completely eliminated the disposable plastic culture, it would many, many generations for the environment undo the damage we’ve done to it in just the last 50 or 60 years alone.
It would seem that immediate cessation of worldwide production and usage of these materials would be most beneficial to the environment, but I don’t see how that’s realistic. I do think that taxing the heck out of them and putting that money back into clean-up and research on restoring the damaged environment would be more beneficial in the period of time it would realistically take to phase out demand.
I use them for dead squirrels and chipmunks. Once every couple of weeks I have to send one of the kids to the pool on “Squirrel detail” with plastic bags in hand.
Triple bagging is the minimum for such a treat, in my book.
This is why I’m against it. I think if the “sin tax” is used FOR helping the environment specifically money collected used to clean up plastic, it’s fine. But all it does is wind up in some overpaid Mayor’s budget as a bonus for a guy who works 2 days a week. Or some overpaid file clerk making $40,000 a year. (You can tell I live in Chicago huh? :))
The people who oppose the plastic bags obviously did not wake up to a cat shitting in their shower this morning and have to clean it up before they could get ready for work. grumble grumble