Motivated by a Tax, Irish Spurn Plastic Bags - New York Times
I’ve written before about how plastic is messing things up. Ireland started taxing plastic bags in 2002, and now almost no one uses them. The entire country has just shifted their perception of reusable bags.
JR and I stopped getting plastic bags after the previous article and we still end up with them once in a while, but really, we don’t even think about them anymore. Nice work, Ireland, maybe Boston will follow.
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Hey, you’re all into the environment.
When I was on the Mayercraft Carrier they had a lot of “Green stuff”
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This sounds like a pretty good idea, and it’s an example of a strategy that I’d like to see this country adopt in a lot of areas: discourage the use of certain products by adding a tax that approximates the social cost of the good. I’d like to see oil conservation approached in this way, f’rinstance.
Yeah, plus I won some bamboo flip-flops….how cool is that?
Bamboo flip-flops are cool…
Matt, I can’t remember where I read it, but there was a good explanation of how someone buying an SUV, for instance, doesn’t pay the actual social cost of owning that vehicle. Even if the car is more expensive than another car, the extra expense doesn’t go towards covering the social cost of the vehicle like the extra danger to other vehicles and the extra wear and tear on our infrastructure.
I think the summation that even a gas tax doesn’t address all of the additional social costs, so maybe an SUV tax is the way to go.
No doubt, there are social costs to owning an SUV over and above the environmental costs.
I don’t agree with the conclusion that a gas tax isn’t the way to go because it doesn’t address all of the social costs.