These days, that question -- "paper or plastic?" -- makes us think of shopping bags. There was a time when we might have thought it applied to how you were going to pay for your purchases. However you pay, basic shopping is increasingly costing consumers a few extra cents or dollars, as more and more jurisdictions are imposing a tax for each bag. The latest seems to be Montgomery County Maryland, DC's close-in, well-off, and eco-trendy suburb. The District of Columbia slapped a tax on bags a year ago, but it includes only grocery and liquor stores; Montgomery's applies to any bag, any time.
I understand the reasons for attempting to reduce bag use: Those plastic bags flying around everywhere (I picked up two out of my front yard this morning), ending up forever snagged in trees, adding to the ugliness of our surroundings. And despite claims by their makers, the plastic bags aren't really biodegradable in any useful sense, particularly as most of them never make it into landfills. Paper bags, on the other hand, not only hold more but are reused with much more frequency, and ARE degradable (you can even shred them onto your compost pile).
Hence I conclude that the true target of bag taxes should be plastic bags only. The fact they target all bags instead is something I attribute to a doctrine I'll call "misguided fairness." Makers of plastic film would whine and scream if their bags were singled out, and that would just be a hassle for local governments, so they consciously choose to do the wrong thing. (And besides, an extra nickel per paper bag won't hurt the county's bottom line, either.) If we must use tax policy to engineer society (and I'm not certain that we must) it would be better, though more difficult, to recognize that not all bags are created equal, and to be realistic about the problem we're trying to solve. Misguided fairness won't ever push plastic bag-makers to better solutions.
Now that the law is in place effective January 1, by the way, I'd suggest those who are acquiring reusable bags get cloth or canvas, rather than those made of all those synthetics and plastics, because you're going to want to wash these bags occasionally, and because eventually, they'll need to be recycled too.
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