Moving past the bag

Hillary weighs in on the plastic bag tax discussion, and she's supportive of the proposal. Again, my primary concern stems around its ability to effectively deter the usage of plastic bags (because the current proposal would waste political capital with little policy achievement).

An example at the macro-level is the possibility of a carbon tax to help curb carbon emissions. In order to achieve the policy aim, however, the penalty must be severe enough to force innovation in the private sector.

Likewise, for the plastic bag tax to truly work, it must utilize a higher penalty for businesses or consumers to force a change in behavior. I'm just not convinced the proposed fee structure would achieve that, which is why I'd lean toward an outright ban.

And, to ease the community into such a ban, it might be useful to institute the ban, say, two years from its passage. Then devote those two years to public education and, as well, public-private partnership to spur change. A good example might be working with the Athens Area Chamber of Commerce, or even the potential regional economic development group, to form a purchasing exchange and let small and mid-size businesses achieve savings when they buy paper bags or reusable canvas bags (and, of course, this exchange could be utilized to buy other goods as needed).

Then, when the ban would be implemented, behavior could have already been modified and a mechanism would be in place to ease any financial pinch from the switch to other bags.