Fairfax County approves 5-cent tax on plastic bags | Hacker News Reader

Fairfax County approves 5-cent tax on plastic bags

wjla.com

14 pointsfspacef11 comments

My worry about the anti-plastic bag push is we're going to rush head first into even less sustainable solutions.

With many people not wanting to carry a bag at all times and global demand rising, we're bound to see more Indonesian rainforests being clear-cut for cheap paper, and "reusable" bags with energy and resource-intensive production methods being used once or twice before being tossed in the garbage or ending up on the side of the road.

With bans on plastic bags should come regulations on actual sustainable substitutes. Require locally made paper with verified sustainable wood/recycled pulp or something similar, or we'll be facing another crisis 10 years from now.

You're in luck. Many European countries and Canada have taxed plastic bags for a few years, so you can explore the results those experiments.

For example, Montreal (and many other canadian cities) started taxing plastic bags in 2018. Then bags under 50 microns we're banned. The larger ones are easier to cleanup and recycle. Around 90% of people carry their reusable bags. I always have a tiny one in my backpack, my partner in her purse, and we keep large ones in the car trunk. The bags are usually made of recycled material.

A 5-cent tax isn’t a ban. It’s a reasonable cost for the value that the bag provides carrying your items, especially if that money is put towards reducing impact of improperly disposed-of plastic.

What's newsworthy about this? In Maryland, both Howard County and Montgomery County have had this tax / fee in place for a while. The bag tax / fee is in counties, municipalities, and districts (including DC) across the nation.

[1] https://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2020/09/28/plastic-bag-fee-go...

[2] https://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/bag/

During the height of Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 many grocery stores banned reusable bags from their stores. It was amusing to see how swiftly and silently they pivoted from "bring your sustainable reusable bags" to "get your filthy corona-covered bags out of our store". I guess the winds have changed again back to encouraging "the use of reusable bags and cut down on the use of single-use plastics"

The understanding of how COVID transmission happens is what’s changed.

It’s not from surfaces - almost always from aerosols. Masking (preferrably N95/KN95/KF94) is what’s needed.

Whats funny about it? Looks like they were using the best information known at the time to reduce viral spread and now reuse bags.

I strongly support minimizing the use of disposable plastics.

I often think of schemes such as this as establishing a price on the alternative. It makes me ask how many uses I should expect out of an alternative solution. So if I think the bag I am considering purchasing (which seems to be made of an awful lot more plastic, but also promises to keep cold things cold), will last 200 uses, then it will be fairly priced at $0.05*200, or $10.

In practice, if I shop around, I can find robust bags for about that price. This makes good sense to me.

The replacement for plastic straws (which, again, seem to be made of less plastic than the cup or lid they are frequently used with) has a much harder economic argument. There's no way I'll ever keep a stainless straw around and unbroken for even 50 uses.

Stainless straws are extremely resilient and hard to break. I use them at home where I wouldn't bother using a disposable straw.

But I'd never use it in the car, where I predominately use plastic straws. No more than I'd stick a screwdriver in the cupholder, sharp end up. Makes me nervous to think about.

Hope to see more of this and a higher price.

Good luck enforcing it.

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