Fast food trash tax in Oakland

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060208/ap_on_re_us/fast_food_tax

This makes me glad. I’m not sure if it makes a difference where you live.

It’s not REGULAR, but it’s not infrequent that I’ll be behind someone at a stop light in the city, and they’ll open the door, and just drop a bag of fast food trash on the ground.

I’ve seen that at a red light. I’ve seen someone walk up to their parked car, open the door, and remove fast food trash that they just tossed on the ground.

Most egregious of all. . .one day I was behind a car at a red light. The passenger rolled down a passenger-side window, leaned a good portion of his upper body out the window and tossed a large Burger King bag across one whole lane, so that it would land on the sidewalk.

First of all, no shame whatsoever about littering.

Second of all, what’s the thought process that leads you to conclude that the sidewalk is such a better place for your litter than the street that you lean out the window to make the toss.

These events have all been fast food. If there’s as much littering of other things I haven’t seen it. It says in the article, 20% of all the litter they pick up in Oakland is fast food wrappers. I’m surprised it’s that low.

Anyway, I don’t know if this is the right answer. It’s hardly the fast food chain’s fault, but still. . .if they have to raise their prices, it’s simply going to make the people who do the littering pay for the pick-up and I can’t argue with that.

We all have things that our taxes pay for that we disagree with, or don’t benefit from and that’s part of life. But, there are costs that are so easily avoided, if people would just act like adults. Don’t fucking litter where you live. Don’t litter anywhere. There are trash cans EVERYWHERE.

Hooray for Oakland. I hope the Baltimore City council reads the same damn article.

2

I wish they would do it here, too. I am so tired of picking up fast food trash from my front yard. I doubt it would stop the problem, tho. Drinking in your car isn’t allowed, but I always had to clean up at least half a dozen beer bottles/cans from my yard at our old house.

3

When I’m out walking around the neighborhood, I see the wrappers and other debris of a certain fast food joint down the street (Hint: it’s McSomething). I sometimes wonder if anyone has ever mapped out the “Trash shed” particular store types produce? It could be interesting to see just how wide an area one store can pollute. There’s its own parking lot, of course. But then there’s the area that the wind will blow the paper around. I don’t know if that is small, like one block or if it would occupy square miles. I suspect that if one were to measure the amount of time it takes to remove a wrapper and throw it out the window, one would find a clusters of garbage that much travelling time away from the store. And then there’s your observations of people dumping their garbage at stoplights when they’re done gorging. That could be miles and miles away from the original store.

4

Sorry, I cannot agree with any behaviour modification through taxes scheme. We give governments far too much power already, I’m not inclined to give them more.

5

Wow. This is one of the most ridiculous ideas I’ve ever heard of. Fast food restaurants are not in any way at fault for this; it’s the people that litter. It’s like taxing farmers for farts.

6

I agree it’s a silly idea, and it won’t really solve anything as far as people’s littering habits go, however, let’s be fair. Obviously, the restaurant isn’t to blame for its customer’s littering habits, but there isn’t any practical way to directly tax the responsible parties. By levying a tax on the restaurants, they are actually taxing the litterers indirectly, since the restaurants will naturally pass the expense on to its customers.

7

Unless they want to make another department of the police force, and have officers on duty in heavy litter areas, ready to ticket offenders. I don’t know if that would be cost effective, I doubt so.

8

I heard about this on NPR last night. Apparently, most of the businesses affected will be charged something like 63 cents a day. They’re going to use the money to install more trash cans, send out more clean-up crews, and have police officers enforce the littering laws.

9

I agree with everything you said except for one detail. Actually, they’re taxing all customers indirectly, not just the litterers, because obviously higher prices apply to all customers.

But how much extra could they reasonably charge for an average tax of 68 cents a day for a single McDonalds? (Note I said “reasonably”, not what they actually will charge.)

This is indeed silly and won’t change a thing.

My first impulse is shoot to kill litterers. However, I know one or two people will find this a bit excessive, so I’d settle for a fine and compulsory community service picking up litter.

10

Oakland resident checking in. It’s not a behavior modification tax. It’s to be used to hire addtional cleaning crews to clean up the litter. The tax itself being very modest. starting at $230 (think small donut shop)up to $2400 per year(McD).
Sayeth An Arky

No it’s not. Think about say TGI Fridays vs Mickey Ds Each item from Fridays is not individually wrapped. Fast food is designed to be consumed on the go, they are directly repsonsible for introducing extra scraps of paper, bags and boxes that traditional restaurants don’t.

By the way, the restaurants can also apply for immmunity by having an agreement to police their area. When I was in HS I worked at a Taco Bell that did just that. Each morning we’d walk three blocks in each direction picking up any Taco Bell wrappers and bags we saw.