SF is crazy: plastic bags

Topics: Regulation
29 Mar 2007

From: Ervan Darnell


I guess this is shooting fish in a barrel, but it's crazy enough to
merit comment:

> The [SF] city's Board of Supervisors approved groundbreaking
> legislation Tuesday to outlaw ****plastic checkout bags at large
> supermarkets in about six months and large chain pharmacies in about a
> year.[....]Under the legislation, which passed 10-1 in the first of
> two votes, large markets and pharmacies will have the option of using
> compostable bags made of corn starch or bags made of recyclable paper. [1]


1) "compostable" materials often don't biodegrade when pressed into a
garbage heap. So, the landfill savings is dubious. "Compostable" bags
could possibly go out with the food garbage, but only a fraction of that
actually gets composted (as opposed to the regular trash). Indeed,
these weaker materials might actually take more space since they have to
be thicker to support the same weight.

2) If recycled paper (one of the alternative bags) tears more easily
than plastic, how much food am I going to lose when it hits the ground?
How much waste is that? How about in gas to return to the grocery store
to buy an item that broke taking the bag out of the car at home?
Presumably they will be made thick enough to be equally strong, but
that's point (1) again.

3) Recycling paper is no picnic either. How much fuel does that cost to
haul the paper and then process it? That could easily be more than the
amount of oil used to make the plastic bag. I don't know which way this
balance goes. But neither does the SF city council, which is the
point. They'll mandate a "solution" that they have no idea actually
solves anything.

4) As a marginal effect, shoppers will now prefer to shop out of SF to
find cheaper prices and thus burn more gas driving around.

5) If someone finds an innovative new kind of grocery bag, it is
forbidden. In a way, this is the biggest cost: progress is stalled as
every change becomes a political battle. For instance, can I reinforce
my recycled paper bag with 10% plastic? And:

6) What's a supermarket? Is my local liquor store now banned from
selling peanuts because they use plastic bags? Conversely, if my $40
bottle of Grey Goose crashes because of a recycled paper bag, I'm going
to be really unhappy. How much will various stores now have to lobby
the city council to be declared not a supermarket? Did anybody on the
city council stop for a second to ponder such a thing?

7) It's not clear this could be implemented nationally (not enough
suitable recycling paper, or that paper would be taken away from other
more plausible uses, like cardboard). If that's so, then implementing
locally by mandate is not really a solution, and not really efficient in
the long run, just a cost transfer to other people. I mean that by the
logic used by the board we could just as well mandate that all paper
products be made from recycled paper, which is clearly impossible since
the paper has to start with trees somewhere. Recognizing the absurdity
of that then begs the question of when it is efficient to use trees and
when is it efficient to use recycled paper. Laws like this skip the
question completely. In the extreme, people have to cut trees, print
something pointless on the paper, then recycle that to create a bag.
The plastic bag was an environmental gesture in the first place to save
trees, now the government is going the other way and mandating we use
more trees (ultimately) and less plastic. Which is it?

8) If I'm in the plastic bag business, I just had a "taking" against me
without compensation and for having nothing wrong. Plastic bag
manufacturing is probably national and this is only a nit, but, again,
if it's a good idea then there should be no objection to national
implementation, which would make the cost substantial. That it's only
partially implemented leaves the harm propotional to the "good". For
the matter, how much did the recycling industry lobby for this bill?
How much is my grocery bill going up just to have paid for (in the long
run) completely useless rent seeking?

9) Consumers like plastic bags, maybe because they can carry more in an
arm load or maybe because they feel good (irrationally I suspect) about
saving the trees. No accounting is made in this bill of the lost
benefit to consumers. That's the general theme, the costs are just ignored.

10) "blamed for killing marine life". Seems like a stretch. Tell me
how many marine animals are killed by plastic bags versus tuna boats.
This is at least a legitimate objection, but it needs some data.

11) "occupy much-needed landfill space." Nonsense. It's being paid for
(more or less) by the people using it. They can consume as much or as
little as they like. If their extra garbage bag fee (or lack of garbage
quota) is hurting them. They can cut back in the most efficient manner
possible. If land-fill space is short (which it's not), then that's
only an argument for raising the price of garbage collection. And, as
noted above, it's not at all obvious that this saves land-fill space.

12) Worst case, the various external costs should be wrapped into a
per-bag tax, and then let the market decide what makes sense.


[1] SF Chronicle, 3/28/07
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/03/28/MNGDROT5QN1.DTL&type=printable
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