Are plastic bags from a grocery stores just bike-shedding? I am not asking rhetorically. That's what I suspect, but I really don't know.
If you have a 20oz soda every day, that's 19 lbs a year? Food packaging plastic? Soap/Cleaner bottles? The plastic window in paper mail. Saran Wrap. Plastic from dry cleaners. Plastic from a cold drink at Starbucks or bubble tea. E-waste. Amazon deliveries. Trash bags. Water Bottles...
It seems poorly thought out to have an environmental fight over something that likely barely matters when there are elephants in the room that need to be taken care of before real climate progress can be made.
I don't even think the bag fee in some states goes to the government. I think it's just money pocketed by the grocery store owner, which seems like an even more grim capitalist corruption and clear conflict of interest.
Why tax consumers, when you could tax the companies making the bags and let them pass the cost to consumers? Same effect, much better alignment, much fewer conflicts of interest. Ten cents is nothing and easily passed on to consumers, so why not make the tax the actual cost of environmental reparations?
If I were an entrenched billionaire trying to prevent meaningful environmental progress, a highly visible, inconvenient, and and what seems likely to be inconsequential issue like grocery bags seems like a dream come true. Diffused responsibility for outcome means no one is responsible for the outcome and it means no one powerful enough to say "no" has to be battled with.
Main difference between plastic bags and several of your other examples are the others are PET and are highly recyclable relative to things like plastic bags.
While I don’t disagree with taxing production of these products to price the externalized costs in to them, I imagine they would still want a bag fee.
No grocery store wants to be the first to start charging for plastic bags, so they’re just going to handle it like any other increase in their costs… price it in to margins on their products. (When fuel taxes go up the grocery store doesn’t start charging a transportation fee or something, right?) Now we have a situation where no individual customer’s choice will directly benefit them, and in fact the rational choice would probably be to keep using the plastic bags since you’re paying for them already!
By exposing the cost directly to the consumer instead of having it lost in the middle of all the other price increases we’ve become accustomed to, they’re at least _aware_ of how their behavior is influencing costs and can take clear, simple actions to avoid those costs on an individual basis.
> I don't even think the bag fee in some states goes to the government
This is the case in CA, at least in the areas I've lived. The grocery store is selling us bags at 25¢ a pop. Undoubtedly the highest margin in the entire store!
If you have a 20oz soda every day, that's 19 lbs a year? Food packaging plastic? Soap/Cleaner bottles? The plastic window in paper mail. Saran Wrap. Plastic from dry cleaners. Plastic from a cold drink at Starbucks or bubble tea. E-waste. Amazon deliveries. Trash bags. Water Bottles...
It seems poorly thought out to have an environmental fight over something that likely barely matters when there are elephants in the room that need to be taken care of before real climate progress can be made.
I don't even think the bag fee in some states goes to the government. I think it's just money pocketed by the grocery store owner, which seems like an even more grim capitalist corruption and clear conflict of interest.
Why tax consumers, when you could tax the companies making the bags and let them pass the cost to consumers? Same effect, much better alignment, much fewer conflicts of interest. Ten cents is nothing and easily passed on to consumers, so why not make the tax the actual cost of environmental reparations?
If I were an entrenched billionaire trying to prevent meaningful environmental progress, a highly visible, inconvenient, and and what seems likely to be inconsequential issue like grocery bags seems like a dream come true. Diffused responsibility for outcome means no one is responsible for the outcome and it means no one powerful enough to say "no" has to be battled with.