Do Surcharge Advocates Target Paper Bags With Equal Emphasis?
To the Editor:
Last Tuesday’s letter endorsing the 10-cent surcharge at McCaffrey’s for each so-called single-use bag supplied by the store prompts a number of questions, and some speculative answers.
If the surcharge would not affect whether or not customers shop at McCaffrey’s, isn’t it also reasonable to assume it would not be much of an incentive for them to bring their own reusable bags? In spite of the reported outcome of the referendum, the present balance of opinion among the shoppers themselves appears to be at least 10-to-1 against having to bring their own bags; 40 or 50 cents more on a bill whose order of magnitude is a hundred dollars seems unlikely to greatly change that balance.
Is it really a significant contribution to the environment to bring one or two reusable bags to the store several times a week while typically driving a minimum of two miles per round trip in semi-urban traffic in a car or SUV that gets less than 20 miles per gallon following such a protocol, thereby emitting at least 2 pounds of CO2 per trip?
Is the sole target of the movement really McCaffrey’s? Would the surcharge not apply to every retailer doing business in the town? For example, will a dry cleaner be required to charge 10 cents for each paper or plastic bag protecting just-cleaned clothes from the atmosphere? Pizza boxes are notoriously non-recyclable and not obviously reusable, so is there not a valid rationale for including them under the surcharge umbrella? Also, as one more inconvenient example, paper and styrofoam coffee cups and “doggie bags” or their equivalent.
I perhaps should know, but don’t, who would get to keep the surcharge. If it’s the stores, it makes a certain sense, since they would be compensated to some degree for their extra clerical work. It would seem regrettable to an extreme degree if the town planned to set up a bureaucracy to enforce adherence to the new ordinance, regulate its application, and collect the proceeds.
Do the surcharge advocates target paper bags and plastic bags with equal emphasis? Both are nominally recyclable, but in practice it appears substantially more likely for paper to be recycled than plastic. Also, paper, though one suspects it is more costly to the stores, is relatively benign environmentally; paper and wood products constitute one of the most effective and least costly — but also least credited — avenues to long-term sequestration of atmospheric CO2 (and paper shopping bags, at least in our house, are rarely single-use).
John Strother
Grover Avenue