Bill would impose plastic bag tax
(David L. Ryan/Globe Staff/file)
By Globe Staff
A state lawmaker wants to impose a 2 cent tax on disposable plastic grocery bags as a way to raise money for recycling and pressure consumers into choosing paper at the checkout.
The proposal, which is the subject of a hearing today before the Committee on Revenue, would increase the tax 2 cents a year, topping out at 15 cents per bag. The money would be split between the store and the state and used to improve recycling.
The bill is the brainchild of state Senator Brian A. Joyce, a Democrat from Milton. Joyce described the ills of plastic bags in an op-ed article he wrote for the Globe in November 2007.
Of the bags 380 billion disposable plastic bags used each year in the United States, only 1 percent are recycled, Joyce wrote. The rest of the bags go to landfills, where they take thousands of years to decompose.
Boston City Councilor Robert Consalvo has proposed banning the disposable plastic sacks in the city, saying the ubiquitous bags are a hazard to the environment and a maddening blight of the landscape.
"They end up everywhere," Consalvo told the Globe in April 2007. "They blow in trees, they're floating in Boston Harbor . . . They're an environmental nightmare. We need to rid our city of these plastic bags."
