No Such Thing As A Free Lunch: Or How You're Already Being Charged for Plastic Bags

To continue off of the subject of my previous post and regressive taxes visa-vie charges for paper or plastic shopping bags, I came across another interesting story on this.

The City of Princeton, New Jersey is debating a regressive plastic bag tax right now. (See the story HERE). The activists pushing this want a 10-cent per bag fee assessed for each plastic bag a store gives to a customer. I've seen many comments to the effect that stores should not be handing out "free" bags, because if things are "free" people will not change their behavior.

But are those plastic and paper bags really free? No they are not.

 

I remember the first day of my high school economics class the teacher had an acronym on the board:

TINSTAAFL

He challenged us to come up with the meaning of this acronym. There were some pretty funny responses, if I remember correctly, but no one got it right.

TINSTAAFL means, "There Is No Such Thing As A Free Lunch". He went on to explain how everything has a price. Everything costs something, and that cost did not necessarily mean money. Someone had to pay for the food, the venue, and the service at the so called "free lunch". Usually when things are advertised as free, the business or person sponsoring the event gives away "free" stuff to lure you in, with the expectation that you will spend more money than they did to feed you. That's why there are sample carts at Costco on Saturdays. For the prices of a few boxes of chicken nuggets or taquitos they expect that they will sell many more boxes of the item, thus making a profit. Eventually the price of the free lunch will be turned back on to the customer in higher prices.

How does this relate to plastic bags and you shopping? The store has already calculated the cost of the plastic bags into the costs of running the store. The cost of running the store is the janitorial services, the utilities, the rent, wages of employees, health benefits, and uniforms for the employees. All of this is factored into the cost of running the store, and we pay for every last bit of it. The twenty or so plastic bags I take home every week are pennies compared to the amount of money I spend in a week on groceries, but they are still factored into the prices I pay for my food. I am already being charged for the bags I take home, the store just chooses not to itemize that charge on my receipt. When people see an itemized charge for a bag they will be upset. And in Los Alamos, where we love to nit-pick about everything, this is going to make some people VERY upset. (Can you picture the volley of letters to the editor of the Daily Post on this?)  Because a 10-cent per bag fee is a regressive tax, it would be impacting the people that could least afford it, the very most.

Another example of TINSTAAFL is how airlines used to offer "free checked" bags, but now many asses a separate charge to check a suitcase. If you've flown and had to pay that charge, you probably have grumbled about it  -- I know I have. The airlines would do better to follow the example of the stores and just assimilate that charge back into the price of the ticket, which they did before the checked bag fee was introduced. In the end, the customer is still paying for the service, but is not reminded of it.

The activist in the story out of Princeton, claims that by requiring stores to charge for bags, it will force people to change their behavior. It might for some people, and it might not for others. But again, why are some people forcing their way of life on others? She also makes the claim that the bags end up in water ways and oceans. This might be true some of the time. But when you consider that the United States is pretty good at picking up after itself, plastic bag bans are totally unnecessary.

Case in point. A study was released this week on plastic pollution in the ocean.

(I am still trying to locate the original study, but this story from the AP quotes from it, see HERE).

According to the study:

"More than half of the plastic waste that flows into the oceans comes from just five countries: China, Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam and Sri Lanka. The only industrialized western country on the list of top 20 plastic polluters is the United States at No. 20. The U.S. and Europe are not mismanaging their collected waste, so the plastic trash coming from those countries is due to litter, researchers said.

While China is responsible for 2.4 million tons of plastic that makes its way into the ocean, nearly 28 percent of the world total, the United States contributes just 77,000 tons, which is less than 1 percent, according to the study published Thursday in the journal Science. This is mostly because developed countries have systems to trap and collect plastic waste, Jambeck said."

Can the United States do better? Yes we can, and we should.   The solution to doing better, however, does not lie in banning things or assessing regressive taxes. It lies in more dynamic recycling programs and market based solutions to the problem. There are companies like the TREX company that buys plastic bags and other plastics for use in the manufacture of decking, benches, picnic tables and similar items. We need to come up with ways to reuse our plastics, instead of banning them. Before we infringe on people's choices and before we allow government to nose its way into a private transaction we should explore other avenues of dealing with our plastic.