NEWS: San Francisco Mulls a 17 Cent Environmental Fee For Grocery Bags

The San Francisco Commission on the Environment is set to pass a resolution that would ask the Board of Supervisors to impose a 17 cent tariff on each paper or plastic bag used in a grocery store. Supermarkets could keep half of the tariff to set up programs to help low income shoppers and setting up recycling centers.



This has to be one of the dumbest things I have seen in a long time. Often I am embarrassed to be associated with San Francisco , and its stuff like this. They want to create a "bag welfare" system to those on food stamps? There is no incentive to recycle one you have been charged and the fee is almost 5 times what they charge for bottles and cans. This is yet another example of out of touch environmentalists who may be well meaning, but have little or no clue about the real world.

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If you save grocery bags you end up with a huge number of them.
When i take my backpack I tell them i don't need a bag.
At the local 'Save-A-Lot' market they don't bag the groceries and charge 5 cents a bag, but instead they have all the odds and ends boxes you can use instead for free.

Other stores give you a 5 cent credit if you don't use a bag or bring your own.

I would prefer that America's legacy not be "the biggest producer of garbage", which we are.

Since China is now scrounging up all the steel it can and people cruise the alleys in my neighborhood for scrap metal i have even started bagging up my steel veggie cans and setting them beside the dumpster. Some one took them so it must have worked.

If people get in the habit of folding, saving and reusing good-condition grocery bags at the store and make it a habit, it will remove a portion of quite unnecessary landfill. Do it with quiet pride, it shows you care about your planet, community and nation.

17 cents sounds a little steep, but i don't know what price landfill space is going for in San Fran. 10 cents sounds more benign.
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This is stupid...

17 Cents a bag? Unreasonable. This will only HURT S.F.'s economy - drastically.

I've done the math on this folks, this is a horrible, horrible mistake if passed.

Sure, I'm all for cleaning up the environment, but this is DEFINATELY the wrong the way to do it.

Why? Well, let's do the math, shall we?

There are [aprox.] 800,000 Shoppers PER DAY that USE 3 - 4 Bags of groceries. In addition to this 800,000, you have [aprox.] 250,000 MORE PEOPLE from OUTSIDE S.F. who shop in S.F. - DAILY.

So, we have roughly 1.1 MILLION PEOPLE, spending anywhere from 51 - 68 cents extra.

But, for the sake of easiness, we'll take 0.59 (59 Cents), and multiply it by the average daily customers in S.F. (800,000), and then multiply it by the days in the year (365).

This is an INSANE amount of money. INSANE.

Let's see if I did this right - I believe this works out to 172,280,000 (172 MILLION 280 THOUSAND dollars)

Now, where does this money go to, eh?

No one knows - that isn't part of the act.

Now, don't get me wrong - I am for cleaning up the environment, but, as a Bay Area citizen, S.F. has way more important problems than its' environment.

Part 2: Now then, onto the stores and customers, themselves!

Now, what are the customers going to do - not pay it, obviously.
And how about the stores? Well, quite simply, they will probably disobey it from time to time, as well. Why? Because it will drive business away from their stores. And that is the last thing they want.

All I see this doing is driving business AWAY from S.F. and into the surrounding cities such as Daly City, Oakland, etc.

-wD

[edit on 25-1-2005 by WeBDeviL]

Originally posted by slank
I would prefer that America's legacy not be "the biggest producer of garbage", which we are.

The big difference is that we have recycle programs here. in fact Palo Alto, which had one of the first, recycles almost everything from lightbulbs to strofoam for free and has curbside pickup for cans, bottles, plastics, paper, and cardboard. Other you take to the center (its only 2 miles from my house). If you throw this stuff intot he garbage, THEY will not pick it up untill you take the recycling stuff out. Garden clippings go to a huge compost center, then twice a year you can take all the composted material you want to put back into your garden.

Thats why this is just another gouging effort by the environmental lobby. Landfill space is expensive and SF already has a recycling program cause its cheaper in the long run cause you need alot less landfill space. Plus the bags become polarfleece jackets

Originally posted by WeBDeviL
This is stupid...

17 Cents a bag? Unreasonable. This will only HURT S.F.'s economy - drastically.

I've done the math on this folks, this is a horrible, horrible mistake if passed.

Sure, I'm all for cleaning up the environment, but this is DEFINATELY the wrong the way to do it.

Why? Well, let's do the math, shall we?

There are [aprox.] 800,000 Shoppers PER DAY that USE 3 - 4 Bags of groceries. In addition to this 800,000, you have [aprox.] 250,000 MORE PEOPLE from OUTSIDE S.F. who shop in S.F. - DAILY.

So, we have roughly 1.1 MILLION PEOPLE, spending anywhere from 51 - 68 cents extra.

But, for the sake of easiness, we'll take 0.59 (59 Cents), and multiply it by the average daily customers in S.F. (800,000), and then multiply it by the days in the year (365).

This is an INSANE amount of money. INSANE.

Let's see if I did this right - I believe this works out to 172,280,000 (172 MILLION 280 THOUSAND dollars)

[edit on 25-1-2005 by WeBDeviL]

I think they want people to re-use bags so they dont have to pay out each time they go shopping.

When I go shopping I take some thick reinforced bags that cost 10p and re-use them each time even though I dont have to pay for normal bags.

If an extra dollar is added onto the bill each time, Im sure more people will do what Im doing.