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11:02:00 AM EST
Hearing Low Rider -- War
Paper or Plastic?
This seems more than a little wacky to me:
SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) -- City officials are considering a proposal to slap a 17-cent surcharge on paper or plastic shopping bags, a debate sure to be watched as a bellwether for other communities.
While no other U.S. city imposes a shopping bag tax, such a strategy has been successfully employed in the nations of Ireland, South Africa, Bangladesh, Australia and Taiwan.
If approved by the city's Board of Supervisors, the fee would apply only to grocery stores that report more than $2 million in annual sales. Other stores could eventually be targeted.
I'm not a tax-phobic sort of person -- I believe in the basic idea that you should fund the government to the extent that you expect services from it -- but I can think of all sorts of reasons not to like this one, not the least of which is that it'll slow down the checkout line that much more as people have to tally up their total number of bags, or yell at the poor grocery boy or girl to repack their groceries more tightly so they can save that critical 17 cents a bag. It just seems like it would be a real pain in the tuckus.
Your thoughts?
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In Denmark, you pay for bags. Don't know if the stores do this or if it's some sort of tax. But it makes you think: OK, we're going shopping. We should bring a bag or two. If we all did this, how much trash could we eliminate??!!
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Just a little addition to my previous comment below. The grocery store I worked for paid a nickel for ANY bag that a person brought in to pack their groceries in, whether it was a canvas bag, or a grocery bag from any store (ours or ANY others), or even one of those rolling grocery bags that some older people use. And it wasn't that much trouble to count the bags used before finishing the order. It was a full service grocer, with sackers who also carried the groceries out, which made things go a lot faster.
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I would be compelled to bring back the ones I got from my last trip to repack in...and I shop the ads...no store loyalty, really. So if they don't mind me packing my groceries in bags that say Safeway while shopping at Albertsons, then so be it...but I will not be thrilled to pay for bags, even the first time...
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"I guess I'd just like to know .... Why 17 cents ??"
Hey, we're talkin' about the government here. You lookin' fer a logical reason?
-Paul
http://journals.aol.ca/plittle/journal3/
(cowboy poetry)
1/27/05 6:55 PM