Is It Better To Ban Or Tax Plastic Bags?

In Washington, D.C., plastic bag use is now taxed at 5 cents a pop. But they do things a little differently out the left coast: California may soon be the first state to make single-use plastic bags entirely illegal, as the legislature advances the first-ever statewide ban, AB 1998, this summer.

So which is better for the environment: bag tax or bag ban? Like many East-West coast debates (soda or pop?; bagel or burrito?) the answer is more complicated that you'd suspect.

At first glance, a ban seems the way to go. No plastic? No problems. The U.S. uses 90 billion single-use bags each year, each of which can clog up oceans, kill marine life, and  our landscape with "urban tumbleweed," as California state Rep. Julia Brownley likes to call it.

But people react badly to being told "no," most especially by anyone resembling a bureaucrat or politician, as Erik Assadourian from the WorldWatch Institute points out. We are quite comforted by even the illusion of having a choice.

Which leads us to a tax. A five cent fee is a pidgin compared to a $50 grocery bill. It certainly leaves us a choice. So, how's that going to be effective? It's the guilt factor, of course. You feel more and more ashamed when every time you check out at the local Safeway, you are forced to think about your environmental negligence and admit it to all within earshot.

This theory has proven a wild success for D.C. The city slashed its plastic bag use from 22.5 million bags to 3 million bags this January, when the tax took effect. Those 3 million bags sold generated $150,000 in one month, money that will go to cleaning up the plastic-clogged Anacostia River. (This river incidentally became the second in the nation to earn itself an EPA-imposed maximum daily trash limit.) So it's not a total ban, but it's a vast improvement and generates "greening" money to boot.

Whether a tax or ban, not all city or state governments are buying into a Beyond Plastic push. Seattle voters recently rejected a 20-cent fee and a bag ban effort in Florida is stalled. Bans have also been legally iffy. A bag-industry funded group masking itself with the grassroots-sounding name, Save the Plastic Bag Coalition, claims all sorts of horrors if plastic bags are banned and has used legal action to block three city ordinances in California.

There is indeed a legitimate debate to be had about whether paper or plastic bags have a bigger environmental footprint, but this is not a reason to stick with plastic -- which has already created a Pacific Ocean garbage swirl bigger than the size of Texas.

What do you think? Would a tax help you reduce your plastic use? Feel free to share some tips for how we can use less plastic or update us on efforts in your city or town.

Photo Credit: Taber Andrew, Flickr User