It's in the bag: DC taxes them, MoCo group pans the plastic kind

It's been a week of bags in the news. The DC Council voted Tuesday to assess a 5-cent tax on both paper and plastic bags at grocery stores, pharmacies and other food-service providers. One cent of tax, per bag, would go to the store; the other four cents would go to fund cleanup of the Anacostia River and its tributaries, which are polluted with litter -- including plastic bags. The Council has to vote on the measure again this month before it becomes law.

Over in Montgomery County, the Green Neighbors citizen group in Cabin John kicked off a campaign Sunday to encourage people to reduce their use of plastic bags. Before the event, the group led several cleanups along the Minnehaha Branch of Cabin John Creek, and removed 350 pounds of plastic. The bags can harm animals and pollute the Potomac River, Chesapeake Bay and Atlantic Ocean.

Taxing or charging for bags makes sense to me, because the store's paying for them -- so if customers need one, they should pay. Using the bag tax to then clean up the environment also makes sense, especially since bags, bottles and other products from grocery stores do end up littering our waterways and woods.

In Montgomery County, we can recycle plastic bags at grocery stores. Arlington has just started a single-stream, curbside recycling program that accepts a wide range of materials, including plastic bags.

DC also accepts plastic bags in its curbside recycling. Wish they had that here in Montgomery!