Bag tax is the least we can do

As of New Year's Day, when you buy items at stores in the District that sell food and/or alchohol, you'll pay 5 cents per shopping bag the store provides to carry your goods home.

The bag fees will fund the clean up of the Anacostia River. A Washington Post article about the new fee quotes some DC shoppers complaining about the cost -- but the cost is truly minimal. At 5 cents per bag, if you required five bags per week, that would be a mere $13 per year. Ten bags a week, $26 per year -- truly a pittance to pay to clean up the river.

Of course, you can avoid the fee by bringing your own reusable bag, which is the whole point. Fewer bags in the community mean fewer end up in the river.

DC lawmakers estimate the fee will generate $3.6 million for the river in its first year. How about Montgomery and P.G. Counties pass a similar fee to generate funds to chip in for the clean up? After all, the river's tributaries begin in those locations.

Do you agree? Post your comment here!

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!