Bag ban bust for biz

Mayor Marty Walsh has developed some excellent instincts about governing. Now if only he would stick to them.

Case in point, that all-too-precious ban on single-use plastic bags passed by the City Council.

Walsh knows that overall it’s a loser of a proposition. Retailers don’t like it. Consumers are going to hate it. Tourists will be flummoxed by it. And the poor will be burdened by it.

But by golly a handful of environmental purists are simply delighted.

Evidence that Walsh knows this idea is really dumb was the fact that he signed it on Friday afternoon, but news of it never saw the light of day until pesky reporters asked him about it Sunday.

And it was then that Walsh expressed some very real concerns.

“Five cents is the threshold,” he said. “Some companies could spend as much as 50 cents or a dollar for a bag. That’s a problem. There are people that are on fixed incomes in the city. It’s going to be passed over to the consumer. A dollar a bag or 50 cents a bag or 5 cents on top of all the other charges that people have to pay, that adds up.”

Gee, you think!

“This is just another example of too many recent government intrusions, which hit brick-andmortar stores, but totally ignores competition online,” Jon Hurst, president of the Retailers Association of Massachusetts, told the Herald. “. . . All this trash hitting front doorsteps for online sellers, that’s totally untouched by this kind of government intrusion.”

Sure all those giant Amazon boxes — carrying everything from dog food to toilet paper — can be recycled. And some will be — but not all. Has any environmental zealot ever added up the waste into the trash stream from all those home deliveries? And about those styrofoam containers for fresh foods. Nope, it’s much easier to make those flimsy plastic bags the

bete noire of the environmental movement.

The ban doesn’t go into effect for another year, so shoppers who swear by the things for cleaning the litter box or double wrapping garbage have a year to start hoarding. And next year’s Christmas gift list can always include a fashionable cloth tote — unless a more sensible council votes to repeal the silly thing.