Chicago Taxes Plastic Grocery Bags to Save the 'Environment' (wink-wink) - Granite Grok

Chicago Taxes Plastic Grocery Bags to Save the ‘Environment’ (wink-wink)

reusable-grocery-bagsChicago recently instituted a new $0.07 per bag tax on plastic grocery/store bags. No price is too high to save the environment, right? What if the “environment” is the city budget? Roughly 70% of that green-tax will go directly to the city to plug holes in the municipal budget. The stealth tax does not quite achieve a Clinton Foundation level of fraud, but it comes close.

And this isn’t their first rodeo. The experts in city government banned some bags outright based on their thickness. Chicagoland residents responded by using thicker bags to avoid the ban.

(hee hee)

Bag bans are a favorite topic for me because they are just so damn stupid.

When Portsmouth, New Hampshire tried to impose a bag ban in 2015, I went to work exposing the flaws in the thinking (and the movement behind the proposed ban). I won’t repeat all of that here. I will, however, add context to one of many arguments against the leading alternative to thin film plastic grocery bags.

Reusable bags, heralded as environmentally friendly are not. They have a significantly larger ‘carbon footprint’ from manufacturing to disposal. Then there is the carbon footprint for proper care (cleaning) of the bags during their lifecycle. Which brings me back to a point I made in the very beginning of my research on the topic.

If you don’t wash them regularly, you risk cross-contaminating your family and friends. Washing and drying requires water and energy, and introduces cleaning chemistry into the environment, but not to worry.  Very few people ever think to wash them, preferring to multiply the likelihood of foodborne illnesses, according to new research from the University of Arizona.

ABSTRACT
The purpose of this study was to assess the potential for cross-contamination of food products by reusable bags used to carry groceries. Reusable bags were collected at random from consumers as they entered grocery stores in California and Arizona. In interviews, it was found that reusable bags are seldom if ever washed and often used for multiple purposes. Large numbers of bacteria were found in almost all bags and coliform bacteria in half. Escherichia coli were identified in 8% of the bags, as well as a wide range of enteric bacteria, including several opportunistic pathogens. When meat juices were added to bags and stored in the trunks of cars for two hours, the number of bacteria increased 10-fold, indicating the potential for bacterial growth in the bags. Hand or machine washing was found to reduce the bacteria in bags by > 99.9%. These results indicate that reusable bags, if not properly washed on a regular basis, can play a role in the cross-contamination of foods. It is recommended that the public be educated about the proper care of reusable bags by means of printed instructions on the bags or through public service announcements.

One more pull quote from the same report. (Emphasis mine)

HPC bacteria ranged from 45 to more than 800,000 per bag. Only one bag was negative for HPC bacteria (< 30 CFU). Coliform bacteria were detected in 51% of the bags tested. In bags containing coliform bacteria, the numbers detected ranged from 3 to 3,330 per bag. HPC bacteria averaged 22,600 and coliform bacteria 576. Greater numbers of bacteria and coliform bacteria were found in reusable bags collected in California than in Arizona (Fig. 4). This may be due to the drier climate in Arizona, which could affect bacterial survival. The greatest numbers of HPC and coliform bacteria were found in bags from the Los Angeles area.

I chose that last quote because I first wrote about bag bans for the proposed LA ban in 2012, with a focus on contamination. A problem that is not new, especially for Los Angeles.

LA is “patient zero” for big city bag bans and the germ infested exodus to so-called reusables (which a shocking number of people never reuse.)

Plenty of other cities and even states have favored bag bans, fees, taxes, and the like, despite the health risk environmental consequences.

The obvious difference between them and Chicago is that the Chi-coms (Chicago’s Communists) motivations appear obvious. They are taking 70% upfront. It’s written into the budget. No one is pretending from the onset–at least on paper–that the city never meant to pilfer the revenues. This is a tax to pad the budget.

The other 30% is, at least temporarily, supposed to mean something green is happening. But this is Chicago. Like every other Liberal Ghetto, the green is your tax dollars nickeled and dimed out of the pockets of working families. And that 30% isn’t going anywhere else for long.

 

H/T Kevin Glass and the Watchdog Nanny of the Week 

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