Washington DC shops to charge 31 cents for plastic bags?

Published on October 26, 2005 By Rajiv Badlani In Business

I just read an article in The Decatur Daily which is published in Alabama, where Vickie Brooks, front-end manager for a store called Kroger says that stores in Washington, DC are charging customers 31 cents per plastic bag. This came as news to me. Searching for this only led back to this one story. I hope this is true. Reusable cloth bags will begin to look truly viable to shoppers in DC and clean up that city’s environment in no time. A 12 cent tax reduced plastic bag usage by 95% in Ireland. Clearly taxation works.

Vickie herself has used cloth bags for years when she buys groceries because she sees how many plastic bags the store uses daily. The Wall Street Journal says the United States consumes 100 billion plastic bags annually, requiring about 12 million barrels of oil to produce. And plastic bags, which look like food to marine animals, cause more than 100,000 marine animal deaths per year. Plastic bags are not biodegradable, but rather, photodegradable. They break down in sunlight into smaller toxic bits, contaminating soil and waterways. This affects us very directly. A shocking statistic says all adult Americans now urinate plastics. Brooks said it might not be long before every community will follow a growing trend in larger cities that charge customers for plastic bags. Most Americans assume reusable cloth bags are expensive. Visitors to www.badlani.com/bags/ are pleasantly surprised to discover how inexpensive they are.

Comments

sushiK

on Oct 26, 2005

Bag tax...

Hmmmm not a bad idea.
Where's the down side to bad tax?

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