That is a big part of the reason that this is a failed argument:
No such promise can ever be assured. The estimated 8 million metric tonnes of plastic, plastic particles and microparticles that enter the oceans every year doesn’t all come from intentional dumping over the railing of a boat. It comes from loose litter, plastic bags blowing in the wind, stuff getting into lakes, rivers, and streams, from storm sewers and drainage systems, carried by groundwater from leaky landfills, and any number of other sources. If plastic bags are out there, they will get into the oceans, and they’re out there – I read somewhere that the US alone discards an average of 1200 plastic bags a year for every man, woman, and child in the nation. And every single one of them is unnecessary.
Which is the other part of the failed argument. As someone already pointed out, “I’m not the problem”, whether true or not, is not the same as “there is no problem”.
I am not a Libertarian nor a Tea Partier, however I believe the correct way of viewing their position would be “If I am not the source of the problem, why am I being penalized?”.
Of course your straw version works better on this board.
Literally zero of my bags get blown into the wind, or into lakes, rivers, streams, storm sewers, or drainage systems, let alone the ocean. If I lived any further away from the ocean, I’d be in Kansas. Not littering is not hard. Why not go after the litterers, instead?
Can you prove that you are not a source of the problem. (You’re definitely not the source of it.) We forget easily. Perhaps you lost a bag or two and forgot about it? Hardly something to keep us awake at night. And, at the checkout counter, how do they distinguish the ones who are super-careful from the ones who don’t give a crap?
Your argument seems close to the “I’d never get a bad mortgage, so we don’t need regulations” argument.
We have littering laws already. Are our highways spotless?
I don’t know where you live, but where I see a cop enforcing speeding laws once a year or so. I’m sure they’d put a lot of priority on enforcing more stringent littering laws. Not to mention littering in front of your house.
But when Big Brother takes over, the problem will be solved.
Is it possible to find out where your bag tax is going? In post number #3 I stated that the stores charged 5 cents here but another penny of tax was charged on top of that.
The 5 cents is a charge that goes directly to the World Wildlife Fund. The additional one cent is part of the province of Ontario’s harmonized sales tax.
I’m far from a tree-hugging environmentalist, but this seems like a good compromise to me.
In DC, abiut 12% of people who get littering tickets pay the fine. It’s a waste of police officer time to track down littering scofflaws.
The better solution is to reduce the number of bags overall. Compliance is much easier because you just have to audit businesses, not skip-trace litterers.
Your “better” solution is a worse use of resources and it will never, ever work.
Plus, plastic bags in landfills may lead to other kinds of environmental damage, such as water pollution. Again, tell me how you insure that your bags do not pollute the environment over the next few hundred years?