Saturday, December 15, 2012

Get the bag out: Del. Morrissey proposes plastic bag tax of 5 cents in Virginia


What is plastic, mostly of short-term use, and a menace to environmental stewardship? If you guessed plastic bags then you’re absolutely correct!

In an effort to curtail the number of plastic bags used by Virginians every year, Del. Joe Morrissey (Highland Springs) proposed a nickel tax on plastic bags to raise money for Virginia’s Water Quality Improvement Fund.[1] The fund has been a significant source of money for the Chesapeake Bay cleanup.

If the proposal is passed in the General Assembly, plastic bags throughout Virginia’s grocery, convenience, and drugstores would cost customers 5 cents beginning in July, 2014.[2] Some bags would be exempt though: bags used for meat, leftover restaurant food, fish, poultry, ice creams, dry cleaning, newspapers, and prescription drugs.

The tax has been in place for 3 years in Washington, D.C. and its creator, D.C. Councilman Tommy Wells, has stated that the program has reduced the number of plastic bags in the Anacostia River by 60 percent (is this the only measure of success?).

In typical Virginia fashion, the proposal will be resisted largely on economic grounds. According to Fairfax County Supervisor Pat Herrity, “If you’re a small business, you’ve got to administer the tax, you’ve got to report it, you’ve got to remit it…I think we should bag the bag tax.” Cute!

While Herrity brings up a valid point about the costs to small businesses, “bagging the bag tax” would be the equivalent to turning away from the low hanging fruit of environmental stewardship. In other words, implementing a five cents plastic bag tax should be a simply way of reducing environmental degradation.

Instead of imposing the plastic bag tax on large and small businesses alike, why not impose the plastic bag tax on big businesses alone? Or how about allowing small businesses to keep a larger portion of the plastic bag tax to cover the costs of the expenses incurred? Why aren’t there different plastic bag tax proposals being ‘thrown around’?

Implementing the plastic bag tax is a no-brain solution to reducing environmental degradation. This is probably why so many Republicans are opposed to it.  


[1] http://washingtonexaminer.com/va.-democrat-pushing-plastic-bag-tax/article/2515815#.UMpow4OfT-k
[2] http://washingtonexaminer.com/va.-democrat-pushing-plastic-bag-tax/article/2515815#.UMpow4OfT-k

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