A bill sitting on Governor Rick Snyder's desk right now, waiting for his signature,1 Senate Bill 853 is "a bill to preempt local ordinances regulating the use, disposition, or sale of, prohibiting or restricting, or imposing any fee, charge, or tax on certain containers.2" Essentially, the bill is seeking to prevent municipalities from enacting ordinances to tax plastic and paper bags at grocery stores. Many municipalities across the United States have implemented plastic and paper bag bans and/or taxes, including many notable counties in California, such as Los Angeles.3 What this all boils down to is that the State government is ironically trying to stop government overreach on regulation by itself overreaching into local affairs.
Only 1 county in Michigan has actually passed anything on this issue and it happens to be where I reside, Washtenaw County; the implementation of the ordinance has since been postponed due to the pending State of Michigan legislation.1 Washtenaw County hoped to address two main issues with the ordinance:
1) To offset the costs of processing plastic bags, which it estimated at $219k per year4 (the tax would bring in an estimated $220k1)
2) To reduce plastic bags in the environment to mitigate harmful environmental effects, such as the fact that plastic bags take 1,000 years to degrade.4
So, why is there a bill to ban the ban? It boils down to 4 main arguments:
1) Plastic bag bans hurt businesses
2) The taxes are regressive, they hurt the poor more
3) Public health is negatively impacted
4) Don't tell me what kind of bag to use!
Plastic bag bans hurt business
Los Angeles County California banned plastic bags and charged a $.10 fee for paper bags. They found a 100% reduction in plastic bags, a 25% reduction in paper bags and a minimal impact on most businesses.5 To be fair, in the LA County case, the businesses kept the profits whereas the Washtenaw County Law directs the proceeds to the county. However, the taxes really quite insignificant compared to revenues of the businesses,
The taxes are regressive, they hurt the poor more
While it is true that poor folks may spend a higher % of their income on these taxes, an analysis on the estimated impact concluded that an average family uses 720 plastic bags at grocery stores per year6 x .$10/bag = $72. An average family would spend $72 per year if they continued to use plastic bags for all their groceries. Considering that most families spend above this amount on groceries every week, the tax is relatively small.
Public health is negatively impacted
There are some articles out there claiming that banning plastic bags leads to more deaths from E coli and other bacteria due to the nature of reusing bags containing food.7 The conclusion isn't particularly convincing. In the cited study, "Klick and Wright estimated that the San Francisco ban results in a 46 percent increase in deaths from foodborne illnesses, or 5.5 more of them each year." But of course the usual correlation vs. causation comes into play here. Is the plastic bag ban really causing the increase? The absolute number of 5.5 deaths per year does not help to convince of the sincerity of the argument.
Don't tell me what kind of bag to use!
I think the crux of the argument really is personal freedom, ie, the "don't tell me what kind of bag to use argument." The problems here are two-fold. The State of Michigan is ironically overreaching into community level affairs to fix the problem of government overreach. And secondly, the basic issue is the public cost of externalities and the health of our shared environment. I think we can all agree that putting 100 billion plastic bags into the environment every year8 is a bad idea. Maybe we shouldn't quibble about the 'how' to reduce that number when the end result is something on which we can all agree.
[1]http://www.wastedive.com/news/update-michigan-bag-bill-awaits-signature-from-gov-rick-snyder/426773/
[2]http://www.legislature.mi.gov/documents/2015-2016/billengrossed/Senate/pdf/2016-SEBS-0853.pdf
[3] http://www.cawrecycles.org/list-of-local-bag-bans/
[4]http://www.ewashtenaw.org/government/departments/environmental_health/recycling_home_toxics/carryout-bag-ordinance/Reusable%20Bag%20Ordinance%20Work%20Session%20PresentationFINAL.pdf
[5]http://ladpw.org/epd/aboutthebag/PDF/Bag%20Ban%20Status%20Nov%202012.pdf
[6]https://conservingnow.com/plastic-bag-consumption-facts/
[7]https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2013-02-04/the-disgusting-consequences-of-liberal-plastic-bag-bans
[8]https://www.usitc.gov/publications/701_731/pub4080.pdf
