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D.C. to impose bag tax
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In an effort to clean up the Anacostia River and enforce environmentalism in the District, Washington Council Member Tommy Wells has proposed a five cent tax on all paper and plastic bags.
The plan would impose a tax on all bags consumers receive from many types of stores, such as grocery, CVS, liquor, and others. Funds raised from the tax would go to resources in order to help clean up the river in the Southeast portion of the nation’s capital.
There are several problems with this proposal.
One can assume that Wells views the tax as a deterrent to keep people from throwing their garbage on the streets and into the river. Perhaps he has not considered the possibility that the bags themselves are not the problem; the issue is that garbage is being thrown into the river (or as some say, thrown onto the streets, thereby making it into the river somehow).
That brings up the further issue that paper and plastic bags are not the only types of garbage being thrown into the river. There are many types of litter, in the form of food wrappers, plastic and Styrofoam cups, bottles, cans, and god only knows what other kinds of disgusting things people discard into the wind. If we are to truly follow Wells’s logic, we would have to impose a tax on all those types of litter as well, not just on grocery shoppers.
It can also be assumed that this proposal is meant as a way to get people to stop trudging home from the store with plastic bags altogether—that they should in fact buy the reusable canvas or hemp bags to avoid the extra tax. If people do so, this plan would merely backfire for Wells, as there would be less funds raised to clean up the Anacostia River. Not to mention the fact that households with more than two people would have to stuff about ten bags into their purses just to accomplish their weekly grocery duties.
There is also no doubt, as is seen in everyday life, that people often reuse the currently free plastic bags they bring home from the store. They can be used for many things such as trash bags for small waste baskets, dry cleaning, and even sack lunches.
And for that matter, has anyone ever golfed on a D.C. course? These places are veritable pits of the trash people have irresponsibly discarded and the grounds people have lazily not picked up. Why should the Anacostia River be eligible for cleanup when the rest of the city is not?
Per usual, lawmakers are assuming that the way to build a responsible society is to force them to be so by law. There is such a thing as personal responsibility, and it rears its head when average citizens decide on their own to clean up their communities. When residents of D.C. decide they have had enough and want to take part in environmentalism, they will buy reusable bags on their own and use the trash cans their tax money has already provided.
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