This new year brings with it a multitude of new laws, ranging from a ban on texting while driving (Illinois) to a requirement for minors to wear seatbelts in all-terrain vehicles (Oregon) to limits on the amounts of trans fats in restaurant food (California) to smoking prohibitions in restaurants and bars (North Carolina) to restrictions on teenagers’ use of tanning beds (Texas).
In Washington DC, a new law requires stores that sell food or alcohol to charge a user fee on paper and plastic bags—5 cents per bag. The law is supposed to encourage residents to bring reusable bags with them when they shop. This in itself isn’t unusual—several cities have enacted or attempted something similar, such as San Francisco’s outright ban on plastic bags—but the arguments for such laws usually have to do with limiting the use of nonrenewable resources, saving energy, or reducing the amount of material that ends up in landfills. In this case, the driver is water quality.
Most of the revenue from the city’s new law, which is expected to amount to $3.6 million dollars in 2010, will fund the cleanup of the Anacostia River. (Businesses charging the fee will retain a percentage of it.) The city’s Department of the Environment says that 21% of the trash in the river, and 47% of that in the Anacostia’s tributaries, consists of plastic shopping bags.
The city is drawing a clear connection between the health of the river and the bag fee, explaining how the bags make their way into storm drains and eventually to the waterway. Slogans promoting the new law include “Skip the Bag, Save the River.”
Some residents and business owners have complained about the fee, but as it went into effect, many stores were distributing free reusable bags to their customers.
Does your city or state have a similar ban or fee on bags, or is it considering one? What would likely be the main motivation for it—water quality or some other environmental benefit?