Expert: Taxes beat bans for promoting reusable bags

A modest tax on single-use plastic and paper bags, rather than an outright ban, would do a better job getting consumers into the habit of using reusable bags, one expert says.

Though it may seem that they’ve always been part of American consumerism and convenience, plastic shopping bags first showed up in grocery stores in the 1970s. And in 2009, Americans used an estimated 100 billion plastic bags a year, and worldwide the total hit 1.5 trillion.

Unfortunately, the rate of recycling for this ubiquitous synthetic material has persistently been low, hovering in the single digits. But in recent years, awareness of the toll the American bag habit takes on our landfills, waterways, and streets has finally led to new restrictions.

In 2010, Washington, DC became the first city in the US to implement a disposable bag regulation: a five-cent tax on disposable shopping bags.

“When designed correctly, small incentives can have large effects on behavior.”

These changes had a big impact: a similarly modest grocery bag tax instituted in a neighboring Maryland county led to a 42 percentage point decline in the proportion of customers using disposable bags—or about 18 million fewer flimsy bags used in the county annually.

Such well-intentioned policies are not all equally effective, and the differences in how they are implemented matter, says Tatiana Homonoff, assistant professor of economics and public policy at New York University.

For example, Homonoff found that incentivizing reusable bags with the help of a tiny bonus—five cents per reusable bag—does not effectively reduce use.

Instead, she says, a modest tax on single-use plastic and paper bags works best to get consumers into the habit of bringing along a reusable bag on shopping trips. “When designed correctly, small incentives can have large effects on behavior,” she says.

New York State will take aim at single-use plastic bags with a ban starting March 1. Here, Homonoff discusses what types of policies are likely to stem the tide of pollution, and how we might all contribute to the effort:

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