Environmentalists are over the moon about passage by two D.C. Council committees of the Anacostia River Clean Up and Protection Act of 2009. The act would place a 5-cent tax on “disposable, non-recyclable plastic carryout bags provided by grocery stores, drugstores, liquor stores, restaurants, and food vendors,” and establish a fund where fees would be deposited.
One of several residents I spoke with, who doesn’t consider himself a green-Earth-global-warming acolyte, endorsed the council’s preliminary action. In what bordered on a harangue, he talked about the bill’s importance, referring to a PBS television report, dredging equipment placed miles off the San Francisco shore and a desert in some African country where plastic bags line the ground.
Have mercy!
Ward 6 Councilman Tommy Wells made his case for the measure using a D.C. Department of the Environment report that found “plastic bags, bottles, wrappers and Styrofoam make up 85 percent of the trash in the Anacostia River. In the river’s tributaries, nearly 50 percent of the trash is plastic bags.” The report also found that placing a small fee on “free” bags could eliminate up to 47 percent of the trash in the tributaries and 21 percent from the river’s main stream.
Doesn’t that mean less than half the trash would be eliminated? Should the solution yield better results?
“We’re all for cleaning up the [Anacostia] River,” said Paul Craney, director of the D.C. Republican Committee. “If the council wants to clean up the river, it doesn’t need to create a tax. It has plenty of money. It should trim the budget and stop being so wasteful. Since 2004 the budget has increased by 42 percent.”
DCRC Chairman Robert J. Kabel said the bill “will force us to purchase more costly plastic bags, rather than do what environmentalist have taught us to do: Reduce and reuse.”
The DCRC has started a petition drive, which may be for naught. Nearly all the council members co-sponsored the original bill.
“Many support this bill because they see it as a way to change our behavior to take greater responsibility for our environment,” Wells said after the bill’s passage. The legislation provides that before the tax is instituted, the city must conduct a public education campaign and provide free reusable bags to D.C. residents, especially seniors and those in low-income communities.
Many retailers already encourage recyclable bags. Some people already use cloth bags, as I do. My testimony alone surely is tangible evidence and reason for environmentalists to hope that others can be saved.
Perhaps the better, less punitive, approach might be for the council to implement its education campaign first. After a year or two, it could assess the results of that effort. And then, only if necessary, a punitive tax could be established.
The proverbial carrot is far better than the stick.
Jonetta Rose Barras, host of WPFW’s “D.C. Politics With Jonetta,” can be reached at [email protected].
