Quote:
Originally Posted by hiredgun
I'm not sure I follow your logic. Let's assume for the moment that in many places that implement the tax, consumer demand for plastic bags drops at a similar scale to what we saw in DC (plummeted down to 15% of original demand). Do you think this would not lead manufacturers to cut back on production? If not, then do you think they would simply produce (and then sit on) 10x the inventory that they could ever conceivably need? That doesn't seem realistic to me...
You might also argue that the tax wouldn't have the same effect elsewhere as it did here, but I haven't yet heard any compelling reasons why that might be true. I'd be interested to hear what you think.
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But it is realistic. Manufacture of products worldwide is not ideally fit to what consumers demand. There is gross surplus and waste produced each year for any and every corporate product, of the consumer product itself, not to mention the energy, resources, and unusable "run-off" to create it, and what remains. If they have extra inventory, they might export it at a slight discount, but in higher quantities, to areas that have yet to implement this tax. There's also another thing to note: now, nearly 45% of all of North America's own plastic shopping bags are manufactured in Asia (China predominantly, but there are also numerous other plants in other Asian countries, Taiwan, for instance). This has increased from 25% just a decade ago. What does a factory in China care about our own domestic relations and politics? Bottomline is the only real thing the Chinese industry is concerned with (not as a whole, but as a generality of the majority) and whatever helps them increase that in the most efficient way possible, that's the route which is followed.
I also came across a website that has a unique and opposite stance to the issue here:
Save The Plastic Bag
(it's more targeted towards the West Coast, which you might prefer)
It's a stark contrast, of course, and I'm not in agreement either way or the other, but at least they use relevant statistics and current anecdotes as to why plastic bags are beneficial / harmful. The basic idea behind the tax is just 'hopeful idealism', not something that would seek to allay, or even partly remedy, the environmental situation at its source, save for post-contributions to environmental clean-up projects. Actually, that's exactly the aim you would think might happen, but I just don't see it coming as a "complete solution" to the problem, if it were to expand.
Maybe I'm just too used to seeing plastic bags in evryday random places in friends' homes all too often, and in places where I do business; the product, while perhaps flimsy and a nuisance outdoors, is clearly a ubiquitous installation of our consumer culture, for better or worse. In my mind, it'll take increasing "unneeded" taxings over several years to lessen its grip nationwide.