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"That shouldn't deter the scores of other cities in the U.S. and elsewhere considering their own plastic bag bans." Actually that's exactly what it should do.

by joesmo 11y ago

"That shouldn't deter the scores of other cities in the U.S. and elsewhere considering their own plastic bag bans." Actually that's exactly what it should do. Austin should also repeal its own ban, at least, in light of the evidence showing that it's ineffective.

jogjayr 11y ago
> Single-use plastic bags pose outsized problems in the form of visual pollution on the landscape -- South Africans joke that plastic bags are their "national flower," due to their propensity to hang on branches -- and damage and delays at high-tech recycling centers. (Reusable bags usually aren't eligible for recycling, but when they end up at centers by mistake, they often wrap around and jam moving equipment.) Single-use bags can also pose health hazards to wildlife and livestock -- during a recent trip to Dubai, I heard a plastic recycler lament that ranched camels frequently die from ingesting the plastic bags that are constantly catching flight in the desert wind -- and even when they do wind up at landfills, they take centuries to decompose. If the desirable outcome is to reduce overall usage of plastic bags then banning them is absolutely the right decision. The evidence shows that people don't value reusable bags highly enough. Which is understandable because stores only charge 10 cents for them (at least in the Bay Area). The solution isn't to repeal the ban: it's to raise the mandated price of reusable bags to something like $5. Tax undesirable behavior and it will go down.
- urda 11y ago
  > it's to raise the mandated price of reusable bags to something like $5. Tax undesirable behavior and it will go down. No it won't. Just throwing a tax on something doesn't magically make it go away, see also "tobacco".
  - jogjayr 11y ago
    That's why I said "go down", not "go away". Funny you should mention tobacco because raising taxes on it has been shown to reduce tobacco usage.
    - roghummal 11y ago
      >Estimates indicate that, for adults, the association between cigarette taxes and either smoking participation or smoking intensity is negative, small and not usually statistically significant. Our evidence suggests that increases in cigarette taxes are associated with small decreases in cigarette consumption and that it will take sizable tax increases, on the order of 100%, to decrease adult smoking by as much as 5%. http://www.nber.org/papers/w18326 http://www.nber.org/papers/w18326
      - vacri 11y ago
        So... your link agrees with what jogjayr is saying? It's just saying that a trivial level of taxes on a relatively cheap item won't do anything, which I don't think surprises anyone. Australia has near-punitive levels of tax on cigarettes, and smoking levels have dropped considerable over the past few decades. About 50% of the price of a pack of cigarettes is tax here, which marries up with your quote. Taxes aren't the only thing making smoking rates drop here, but among the smokers I know, most of them have reduced their rates simply due to the expense. http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/a-dollar-to-light-up-smokers-brace-for-another-jump-in-tobacco-excise-20140831-10aln2.html http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/a-doll...
        roghummal 11y ago
        >So... your link agrees with what jogjayr is saying? ... yes. And I believe the "smoking tax" punishes the poor. You haven't shown that it doesn't; I haven't shown that it does. What we've established is that taxing smoking doesn't stop smokers--Until it's too high a cost to pay. For the poor. If you think reducing from two packs a day to one and a half packs is a meaningful reduction, enjoy the sensation. That's all you're getting. Savor it. s/my number/your number/ and the same people are getting sick and dying. They're just paying more for the privilege.
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    Since people are rarely physically addicted to tossing out reusable bags, the analogy to tobacco fails.
- click170 11y ago
  There's an argument to be made that trying to tax undesirable behaviors is a form of corruption. If you want to change other peoples behavior I have trouble supporting something that unfairly penalizes the poor.
  - jogjayr 11y ago
    > There's an argument to be made that trying to tax undesirable behaviors is a form of corruption. Yes there certainly can. I won't make it though; I like looking at a plastic-free environment myself. > If you want to change other peoples behavior I have trouble supporting something that unfairly penalizes the poor. How exactly does a plastic bag ban unfairly penalize the poor? I could make the argument that by reducing city trash and recycling costs, street sweeping costs and the store's costs in providing the bags, the poor actually benefit overall. Not to mention it's poor neighborhoods, which typically have more littering, that potentially stand to benefit more from less waste. Rich neighborhoods can afford to pay for street cleaning out of pocket if the city doesn't come through; poor ones can't. EDIT: When you get to the bottom of it, plastic bags impose a negative externality on taxpayers (in the form of higher city trash costs), businesses (more littering makes the city less visually appealing) and animals (which get trapped in plastic bags). People are free to use plastic bags, but there should be a cost associated with all the negative consequences of this behavior to everyone else.
    - sokoloff 11y ago
      Raising the mandated minimum price of a reusable bag to $5 is what I presume click170 was saying penalized the poor.
      - jogjayr 11y ago
        I meant the mandated minimum price of a reusable bag _at the counter_ should be $5 (a number I pulled out of the air, with little thought). You do realize though, that it's otherwise possible to buy a reusable bag for less than $5 right? (Amazon shows me a pack of 10 for $12, or $1.20/bag). Even most grocery stores sell reusable bags for $1-2 apiece; so in the overwhelming majority of scenarios people would be paying more than 10 cents but less than the punitive $5. And by consciously buying a bag (instead of just saying "Yeah, I'll pay 10 cents for a bag" at the counter), people might be less likely to throw it out.
- burntsushi 11y ago
  > The evidence shows that people don't value reusable bags highly enough. This is an incomplete thought. The more complete thought is: "The evidence shows that people don't value reusable bags as highly as I think they ought to due to my own personal preferences."
  - jogjayr 11y ago
    > The evidence shows that people don't value reusable bags highly enough to not throw them out without a second thought. > due to my own personal preferences I'm going ignore the snarky tone and address the underlying idea: it's not just my own personal preferences. Clogged drainage systems (see Mumbai, India), visual pollution, injury to wildlife, increased taxpayer costs for trash and recyling; all are due to plastic bags. These are things that affect more than just me: they affect you too, they affect everyone. Plastic bags; their use and disposal aren't things that happen in isolation. Plastic is (effectively) forever. It will remain here long after you or I and our descendants are gone, choking the life out of some lake or pond.
    - burntsushi 11y ago
      It's not snark. I'm very serious: you're omitting key details in your claims. Your prose suggests something as a fact, when in actuality, it's just your own personal valuation. It suits your claim to state things as if they were facts because it grants you authority. I'm calling you out on it. > These are things that affect more than just me You're moving the goal post. I don't disagree that the existence of plastic bags doesn't affect me or others. I'm contesting that their valuation level is some known fact that your prose suggests you're privy to. > to not throw them out without a second thought. Everyone I know (including myself) saves their plastic bags for reuse. I've been using the same plastic bag to bring my lunch to work since last November!
      - jogjayr 11y ago
        > Your prose suggests something as a fact, when in actuality, it's just your own personal valuation I guess I assumed when people throw something out, they don't value it sufficiently highly. That's obviously why you see all those gold watches and diamond rings in the trash every day. </sarcasm> (I'm obviously not suggesting reusable bags are worth the same as a gold watch) Perhaps I should have phrased it as "The evidence suggests" instead of "shows". Maybe the definitiveness of my statement is what has rubbed you the wrong way. I don't know. There could be other reasons why people throw out reusable bags too: lack of storage space, lack of knowledge that they're reusable, not enough time to think about it/need to clean up in a hurry. > Everyone I know (including myself) saves their plastic bags for reuse. I've been using the same plastic bag to bring my lunch to work since last November! I personally think that's very admirable and applaud you for it (totally serious here). I wish more people did the same as you. Not everyone does it and in some circles, storing plastic bags from the store in a drawer marks you out as some sort of frugal weirdo.
NeutronBoy 11y ago
My take on the article is that it was the encouraging the use of recyclable plastic bags that's the problem. Various towns and retailers around Australia followed the same approach in banning plastic bags, replacing them with 'environmentally friendly' bags [1] which appear less disposable than plastic bags, so people don't get in the mindset that they should throw them out. [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d8/GreenBag.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d8/GreenBag.jpg
SOLAR_FIELDS 11y ago
From someone who lives in Austin, the problem isn't the bag ban. It's the low impact of skirting around it. As another commenter mentioned, the only major retailer that sells reusable plastic bags in Austin is HEB. And HEB does move a very significant percentage of all groceries in Austin. Whole foods, Randalls, Sprouts, Fiesta and Walmart all use paper bags. If HEB either switched to paper or charged more for each plastic bag this story wouldn't exist.
- bduerst 11y ago
  That's what I got from this story as well - the problem isn't that Austin is trying to solve the plastic bag issue, it's that Austin is going about it the wrong way. The article seems to dance around that but settles on just the ban itself.
  - SeanBoocock 11y ago
    I also live in Austin and have supported the plastic ban. HEB is almost single-handedly undercutting the effectiveness of the ban by selling cheap "reusable" plastic bags at checkout for the majority (at least in my experience) of people who don't bring their own. If they joined the rest of Austin grocers and instead sold paper bags, it would eliminate most of the remaining plastic bag litter. Increasing the price of these bags - coupled with making the canvas bags available for SNAP participants if they aren't already - may also start to change behavior.
dragonwriter 11y ago
Plenty of other places have bag bans, if they have not had similar problems, this suggests that differences between Austin and the other places, in terms of the details of the band or relevant context, should be examined to understand why Austin's ban had the undesired results. But, a single failure in one of many implementations of the idea is not a reason to abandon the idea.

by joesmo 11y ago

jogjayr 11y ago

> Single-use plastic bags pose outsized problems in the form of visual pollution on the landscape -- South Africans joke that plastic bags are their "national flower," due to their propensity to hang on branches -- and damage and delays at high-tech recycling centers. (Reusable bags usually aren't eligible for recycling, but when they end up at centers by mistake, they often wrap around and jam moving equipment.) Single-use bags can also pose health hazards to wildlife and livestock -- during a recent trip to Dubai, I heard a plastic recycler lament that ranched camels frequently die from ingesting the plastic bags that are constantly catching flight in the desert wind -- and even when they do wind up at landfills, they take centuries to decompose. If the desirable outcome is to reduce overall usage of plastic bags then banning them is absolutely the right decision. The evidence shows that people don't value reusable bags highly enough. Which is understandable because stores only charge 10 cents for them (at least in the Bay Area). The solution isn't to repeal the ban: it's to raise the mandated price of reusable bags to something like $5. Tax undesirable behavior and it will go down.

urda 11y ago
> it's to raise the mandated price of reusable bags to something like $5. Tax undesirable behavior and it will go down. No it won't. Just throwing a tax on something doesn't magically make it go away, see also "tobacco".
- jogjayr 11y ago
  That's why I said "go down", not "go away". Funny you should mention tobacco because raising taxes on it has been shown to reduce tobacco usage.
  - roghummal 11y ago
    >Estimates indicate that, for adults, the association between cigarette taxes and either smoking participation or smoking intensity is negative, small and not usually statistically significant. Our evidence suggests that increases in cigarette taxes are associated with small decreases in cigarette consumption and that it will take sizable tax increases, on the order of 100%, to decrease adult smoking by as much as 5%. http://www.nber.org/papers/w18326 http://www.nber.org/papers/w18326
    - vacri 11y ago
      So... your link agrees with what jogjayr is saying? It's just saying that a trivial level of taxes on a relatively cheap item won't do anything, which I don't think surprises anyone. Australia has near-punitive levels of tax on cigarettes, and smoking levels have dropped considerable over the past few decades. About 50% of the price of a pack of cigarettes is tax here, which marries up with your quote. Taxes aren't the only thing making smoking rates drop here, but among the smokers I know, most of them have reduced their rates simply due to the expense. http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/a-dollar-to-light-up-smokers-brace-for-another-jump-in-tobacco-excise-20140831-10aln2.html http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/a-doll...
      - roghummal 11y ago
        >So... your link agrees with what jogjayr is saying? ... yes. And I believe the "smoking tax" punishes the poor. You haven't shown that it doesn't; I haven't shown that it does. What we've established is that taxing smoking doesn't stop smokers--Until it's too high a cost to pay. For the poor. If you think reducing from two packs a day to one and a half packs is a meaningful reduction, enjoy the sensation. That's all you're getting. Savor it. s/my number/your number/ and the same people are getting sick and dying. They're just paying more for the privilege.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  Since people are rarely physically addicted to tossing out reusable bags, the analogy to tobacco fails.
click170 11y ago
There's an argument to be made that trying to tax undesirable behaviors is a form of corruption. If you want to change other peoples behavior I have trouble supporting something that unfairly penalizes the poor.
- jogjayr 11y ago
  > There's an argument to be made that trying to tax undesirable behaviors is a form of corruption. Yes there certainly can. I won't make it though; I like looking at a plastic-free environment myself. > If you want to change other peoples behavior I have trouble supporting something that unfairly penalizes the poor. How exactly does a plastic bag ban unfairly penalize the poor? I could make the argument that by reducing city trash and recycling costs, street sweeping costs and the store's costs in providing the bags, the poor actually benefit overall. Not to mention it's poor neighborhoods, which typically have more littering, that potentially stand to benefit more from less waste. Rich neighborhoods can afford to pay for street cleaning out of pocket if the city doesn't come through; poor ones can't. EDIT: When you get to the bottom of it, plastic bags impose a negative externality on taxpayers (in the form of higher city trash costs), businesses (more littering makes the city less visually appealing) and animals (which get trapped in plastic bags). People are free to use plastic bags, but there should be a cost associated with all the negative consequences of this behavior to everyone else.
  - sokoloff 11y ago
    Raising the mandated minimum price of a reusable bag to $5 is what I presume click170 was saying penalized the poor.
    - jogjayr 11y ago
      I meant the mandated minimum price of a reusable bag _at the counter_ should be $5 (a number I pulled out of the air, with little thought). You do realize though, that it's otherwise possible to buy a reusable bag for less than $5 right? (Amazon shows me a pack of 10 for $12, or $1.20/bag). Even most grocery stores sell reusable bags for $1-2 apiece; so in the overwhelming majority of scenarios people would be paying more than 10 cents but less than the punitive $5. And by consciously buying a bag (instead of just saying "Yeah, I'll pay 10 cents for a bag" at the counter), people might be less likely to throw it out.
burntsushi 11y ago
> The evidence shows that people don't value reusable bags highly enough. This is an incomplete thought. The more complete thought is: "The evidence shows that people don't value reusable bags as highly as I think they ought to due to my own personal preferences."
- jogjayr 11y ago
  > The evidence shows that people don't value reusable bags highly enough to not throw them out without a second thought. > due to my own personal preferences I'm going ignore the snarky tone and address the underlying idea: it's not just my own personal preferences. Clogged drainage systems (see Mumbai, India), visual pollution, injury to wildlife, increased taxpayer costs for trash and recyling; all are due to plastic bags. These are things that affect more than just me: they affect you too, they affect everyone. Plastic bags; their use and disposal aren't things that happen in isolation. Plastic is (effectively) forever. It will remain here long after you or I and our descendants are gone, choking the life out of some lake or pond.
  - burntsushi 11y ago
    It's not snark. I'm very serious: you're omitting key details in your claims. Your prose suggests something as a fact, when in actuality, it's just your own personal valuation. It suits your claim to state things as if they were facts because it grants you authority. I'm calling you out on it. > These are things that affect more than just me You're moving the goal post. I don't disagree that the existence of plastic bags doesn't affect me or others. I'm contesting that their valuation level is some known fact that your prose suggests you're privy to. > to not throw them out without a second thought. Everyone I know (including myself) saves their plastic bags for reuse. I've been using the same plastic bag to bring my lunch to work since last November!
    - jogjayr 11y ago
      > Your prose suggests something as a fact, when in actuality, it's just your own personal valuation I guess I assumed when people throw something out, they don't value it sufficiently highly. That's obviously why you see all those gold watches and diamond rings in the trash every day. </sarcasm> (I'm obviously not suggesting reusable bags are worth the same as a gold watch) Perhaps I should have phrased it as "The evidence suggests" instead of "shows". Maybe the definitiveness of my statement is what has rubbed you the wrong way. I don't know. There could be other reasons why people throw out reusable bags too: lack of storage space, lack of knowledge that they're reusable, not enough time to think about it/need to clean up in a hurry. > Everyone I know (including myself) saves their plastic bags for reuse. I've been using the same plastic bag to bring my lunch to work since last November! I personally think that's very admirable and applaud you for it (totally serious here). I wish more people did the same as you. Not everyone does it and in some circles, storing plastic bags from the store in a drawer marks you out as some sort of frugal weirdo.

NeutronBoy 11y ago

My take on the article is that it was the encouraging the use of recyclable plastic bags that's the problem. Various towns and retailers around Australia followed the same approach in banning plastic bags, replacing them with 'environmentally friendly' bags [1] which appear less disposable than plastic bags, so people don't get in the mindset that they should throw them out. [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d8/GreenBag.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d8/GreenBag.jpg

SOLAR_FIELDS 11y ago

From someone who lives in Austin, the problem isn't the bag ban. It's the low impact of skirting around it. As another commenter mentioned, the only major retailer that sells reusable plastic bags in Austin is HEB. And HEB does move a very significant percentage of all groceries in Austin. Whole foods, Randalls, Sprouts, Fiesta and Walmart all use paper bags. If HEB either switched to paper or charged more for each plastic bag this story wouldn't exist.

bduerst 11y ago
That's what I got from this story as well - the problem isn't that Austin is trying to solve the plastic bag issue, it's that Austin is going about it the wrong way. The article seems to dance around that but settles on just the ban itself.
- SeanBoocock 11y ago
  I also live in Austin and have supported the plastic ban. HEB is almost single-handedly undercutting the effectiveness of the ban by selling cheap "reusable" plastic bags at checkout for the majority (at least in my experience) of people who don't bring their own. If they joined the rest of Austin grocers and instead sold paper bags, it would eliminate most of the remaining plastic bag litter. Increasing the price of these bags - coupled with making the canvas bags available for SNAP participants if they aren't already - may also start to change behavior.

dragonwriter 11y ago

Plenty of other places have bag bans, if they have not had similar problems, this suggests that differences between Austin and the other places, in terms of the details of the band or relevant context, should be examined to understand why Austin's ban had the undesired results. But, a single failure in one of many implementations of the idea is not a reason to abandon the idea.