While Georgetown students were away on winter break, a new tax approved by the D.C. Council over the summer came into effect, levying five cents on every disposable bag. The Council should be commended for taking the lead on environmental issues with this progressive tax that will help reduce the overabundance of filmy plastic bags that so frequently end up on the sides of roads, in trees, and floating in lakes and rivers.
Disposable bags are a perfect target for this type of tax. After cigarette butts, single-use bags are the second most common form of litter, with an estimated 90 billion disposed of per year worldwide, according to a United Nations report published in 2009. D.C.’s tax will be especially environmentally friendly, with its proceeds primarily going towards cleaning up the heavily polluted Anacostia River.
Washington is just the second major American city to enact legislation limiting the usage of disposable bags—San Francisco banned plastic bags outright in 2007—and the move has inspired many other cities like Athens, Ga., Orlando, Fla., and Santa Monica, Calif. to consider similar legislation. The United States is notoriously slow on environmental issues—even China has had a plastic bag ban in place since January 2008—and it is noble that Washington, the nation’s capital, did not bow to pressure from the powerful plastics industry.
The city also deserves credit for partnering with CVS and Safeway—the two largest sources of plastic bags in the city—to make thousands of reusable bags available to customers during the initial days of the tax. Other stores, like Trader Joe’s, gave away free reusable bags to help customers into the habit of bringing bags with them when shopping. The new law lets stores keep two cents of the tax instead of the usual one, so long as they actively promote the use of environmentally friendly bags, according to The Washington Post.
Opponents say the tax is unnecessary, arguing consumers already use and reuse the plastic bags. However, a 2007 Environmental Protection Agency study found that only 5.2 percent of plastic bags are recycled. Fortunately, the left-leaning D.C. Council decided to combat this environment-threatening laziness, enacting a tax that forces consumers to think about the ecological effects of disposable bags on a daily basis. The District has demonstrated national leadership on this important issue. Now it falls to other cities to follow suit.
