Inertia Wins!

Retailers have traditionally provided free shopping bags to their customers as a courtesy. Washington, DC’s city government – known for being less than courteous – is now requiring stores to charge customers five cents for each plastic bag they use at checkout.

The tax is environmentally motivated. Since the city is acting so urgently on shopping bags, that implies that they must be the most urgent environmental threat facing DC. If that’s the case, then DC must be a veritable ecological paradise, or else its priorities are misplaced. One or the other must be true.

There were 84 unsolved murders in DC in 2009, by the way.

In lieu of plastic bags, the city is urging people to buy reusable cloth bags. But those have an environmental footprint nearly 100 times larger than a plastic bag, according to Sierra Club data. They have to be used many, many times before they cause any savings. They are also a haven for bacteria if not regularly washed. And washing them adds to their footprint.

Washington, DC has a lot of problems. Expensive but inferior schools, crime, violence, high taxes and spending – the list is long. The epidemic of plastic bags littering the streets is right at the bottom of that list. It should be prioritized accordingly. The regressive plastic bag tax should be repealed.