Re:San Francisco Is Requiring Solar Panels on All New Buildings
by Karunamon on Friday April 22, 2016 @03:43PM
(#11552068)
Does the nickel per bag have an appreciable impact on the environment? It's being floated as an anti-littering thing, so keep in mind the goalposts have already moved once.
But if it does, that's fair enough.
If not, it's just another "because we said so" tax with little basis in reality.
Re:San Francisco Is Requiring Solar Panels on All New Buildings
by dragontamer on Friday April 22, 2016 @04:12PM
(#11552256)
> Does the nickel per bag have an appreciable impact on the environment? It's being floated as an anti-littering thing, so keep in mind the goalposts have already moved once.
In my county, the nickle is a reminder. The program costs the stores a penny to run, and it costs like two or three pennies/bag to run the regulations (I guess the agents who go around store-to-store to make sure that everyone is in compliance). So the county is only getting like a penny/bag in profit out of this. With 10-million bags used per year, that's like $100,000 in taxes, which is barely a rounding error on the budget.
The primary purpose is to remind people of the effects of pollution, not actually to create revenue. But its an effective means at curbing plastic-bag pollution at the source (people using fewer bags)
You throw away a plastic bag, which is 100% legal btw, you create a long-term effect.
If you outlaw the disposal of plastic bags, how the hell do you enforce this regime? Do you hire a bunch of police officers to dig through people's garbage, and then fine people whenever they find a plastic-bag in the mix? I mean... yeah... I guess that's fair. But this is a very unrealistic system.
From a practicality point of view, a $0.05 bag tax seems damn fair.