Plastic bag tax did not work overseas and will fail here too

WITH the pending ban of plastic shopping bags it is worthwhile to reflect on Ireland’s foray into their bag tax.

The facts:

The Irish bag tax did not solve a litter problem. But it did have a number of unintended consequences with environmental impacts.

In 2002, the Republic of Ireland imposed a €0.17 tax on plastic shopping bags to discourage bag usage because of an overestimated litter concern that plastic shopping bags comprised 5 per cent of the litter stream and the visual pollution was hurting tourism.

The reality was that plastic shopping bags (according to Ireland’s 2001 litter audits) was only 0.75 per cent of litter.

The tax did not solve the litter problem, only the perception of a problem.

Consequences after eight years of the bag tax, the bag tax in Ireland:

Had a negligible impact on litter reduction which remained at less than 1 per cent.

Increased paper bag litter from 0.35 per cent to 0.38 per cent of total litter, as residents switched from plastic to paper.

Increased the consumption of paper bags (plus 400 per cent) and plastic (plus 20 per cent).

Why did bag tax ultimately fail?

First, there was no bag litter problem. Second, the Irish tax failed to take into account that plastic bags are a necessity and have high re-use for household waste. The result was that the tax forced consumers to purchase cheaper, thicker plastic kitchen catcher type bags off the shelf. Sales of kitchen catchers increased 77 per cent, which put a disproportionately high percentage of new plastic into the waste stream because the bags are thicker than regular plastic shopping bags.

(Facts courtesy of www.AllAboutBags.ca/irelandandlitter)

And guess which European country has the highest per capita of plastic waste – yep – Ireland gets the gold with 61kg per capita with Luxembourg getting the silver with 52kg. That Sherlock Shorten is where you should focus your attention, not piddly shopping bags that are re-used.

All in all the plastic shopping bag ban can be summed up as another typical Labor/Green warm fuzzy feeling failure.

BTW, next on the Labor/Green legislative list is taxing takeaway coffee cups at 22c per cup.