If you’re one of those who cringe every time the grocery store clerk hands you 24 plastic bags in which to carry your purchases, you might be interested to know that the city of San Francisco may just start charging the grocery stores 17 cents for each of the bags they use. Hooray! Go for it, you wacky San Franciscans!
Those stupid little bags mess up our roadways, get stuck in recycling machines, and get into the oceans and kill marine life-—not to mention suffocating the occasional human infant. City experts think consumers in that town bring home something like 50 million bags a year, and it costs $8.4 million to clean them up. The idea behind the 17 cent fee is to cover some of those costs, but also to change people’s behavior. Oh, yeah, the fee will apply to paper bags as well, in an effort to reduce all bag-usage.
Are you a paper or plastics person? Do plastic bags concern you? Use the comment box below.
Posted by Blogger Chris at November 30, 2004 07:56 PM | TrackBack