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Grocery bag fee bill diesWould have charged 6 cents per bagGene Davis, DDN Staff WriterWednesday, February 25, 2009 | |
A bill that would have charged shoppers 6 cents per plastic bag used was killed in the Colorado Senate yesterday.
Under Senate Bill 156, businesses with annual revenues of more than $1 million, or whose size was more than 10,000 square feet, would have been required to charge customers a 6-cent user fee for each plastic checkout bag that they used. Businesses would have been allowed to keep 3 cents for each bag; the other 3 cents per bag would have been transferred to the treasury office, which would have been required to establish a fund for the education of environmental dangers associated with plastic bags.
Sens. Shawn Mitchell, R-Broomfield, and Ted Harvey, R-Highlands Ranch, were among the lawmakers to bag the legislation yesterday.
“This bill, like many of those before it, is emblematic of the problems that result from trying to translate good intentions into government control,” said Mitchell.
Supported by students
The impetus behind the measure came from Kent Denver School history teacher Paul Gilden. After becoming outraged with the use of plastic bags, Gilden invited students to join him on his quest to rid the state of shopping bags. He put together a posse of 15 students who decided that the best way to tackle the issue was through legislation.
“The environment is really important to us,” said senior Alexx Hoholik last month. “It’s going to be a huge thing in the future and we want to help in that change, we want to reduce what we do to our environment as much as we can.”
Unintended consequences
Harvey argued yesterday that a ban on plastic bags would cause an increase in the use of paper bags — something he said would do more harm to the environment than good. The senator used a hypothetical that was similar to what Deborah Hart, a member of Better Bags Colorado, said in January.
Paper bags use 60 percent more energy, generate 70 percent more air and 50 times more water pollutants than plastic bags, according to statistics cited by Better Bags Colorado.
Meanwhile, Americans use approximately 380 billion plastic bags every year — about 1 billion per day. The bags themselves last up to 1,000 years and most end up in landfills or blown into oceans and rivers, according to Better Bags Colorado.
Event though the legislation was killed yesterday, most supermarkets have already initiated their own incentives and voluntary recycling efforts. Many large grocers, for example, offer credits of around 5 cents per reusable bag. The Whole Foods Market chain said last year that it would stop using plastic grocery bags all together.
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| clear perspective @ 2009-02-25 06:27:37 | For facts and links to the studies about plastic bags and the environment that started it all, as well as environmental shopping strategies and a survey of plastic bag knowledge...please visit
www.thetruthaboutplasticbags.com
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