Council considers a 7-cent plastic bag tax

The Memphis City Council may tax shoppers 7 cents per plastic shopping bag or per bill to discourage the use of bags that can end up littering streets and waterways.

The proposal for the “plastic checkout bag tax” is still in its infant stages, but sponsor and council chairman Berlin Boyd said he plans to present the ordinance within the next month in hopes that it will lead more shoppers to bag their groceries with reusable cloth or paper bags instead of plastic.

The city currently spends about $5.6 million annually to bury plastic bags in landfills, in addition to the cost to clean up littered bags, he said.

The ordinance would exempt shoppers who are older than 65 or are receiving federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, formerly known as food stamps.

“We just want to protect (Memphis) and build it up for future generations,” Boyd said.

Many of the details are still up in the air, including whether the tax will be applied per bag used or per checkout bill, Boyd said. He was also uncertain whether he will propose having retailers collect the tax at checkout or have bag wholesalers collect the tax when they sell the bags to the stores.

But either way, 5 cents of the tax would go to a special city fund for use on environmental or drainage improvement projects while the retailers or wholesalers would pocket the remaining 2 cents to offset their administrative costs.

Asked why the money was being dedicated to environmental projects, Boyd said the bags usually end up in the city’s water system.

“It’s just specifically for things having to do with the environment,” Boyd said of the undetermined amount of revenue that would flow to the city from the tax.

The draft of the ordinance calls for businesses to pay a $100 penalty for every store that doesn’t remit its taxes to the city.

Other cities have implemented similar taxes in an effort to encourage shoppers to bag their groceries using reusable bags, but the tax remains controversial. Some council members privately worried the tax could disproportionately impact poorer residents who aren’t receiving SNAP benefits.

Scottie Woodard, a manager of the Shop & Save grocery store in South Memphis, said the tax would further burden customers.

“It would be bad for business,” he said.

Lee Mills, chairman of the Shelby County Republican Party, said government “isn’t the answer to everything.”

“It seems the answer is always ‘more taxes,’” Mills said.

“If plastic bags are an issue — and they most likely are — how about working with the stores to solve the problem first?”

The city isn’t the only entity paying a price for shoppers to use plastic bags, said council member Frank Colvett Jr. Colvett, who is in the landscaping business, said businesses also pay to clean up litter, and that some landscaping crews even have special containers for all the trash they have to pick up from lawns.

Council member Edmund Ford Jr. proposed a similar ordinance years ago but it failed to get traction with council members at the time. But Ford said the new council is more open to these kinds of revenue-generating ideas that don’t add to the property tax rate.

“New eyes, new council,” Ford said. “This is a more progressive council than previous councils.”

Memphis Chief Operations Officer Doug McGowen said the administration does not have a position yet on the proposed ordinance but is open to the discussion.

“We all want a cleaner city, obviously,” McGowen said.

Reach Ryan Poe at poe@commercial appeal.com and on Twitter at @ryanpoe.