San Francisco imposes environmental taxes on plastic bags

San Francisco, which has always attached great importance to environmental protection, launched a new environmental protection measure on the 25th, which will impose a tax of 17 cents on each plastic or paper shopping bag, making San Francisco the first city in the United States to impose a green tax on shopping bags.

According to statistics, 90% of the commonly used shopping bags are plastic, which has caused great harm to the environment. Environmental experts point out that since plastic bags can hardly be recycled, it is actually producing a large amount of undecomposable garbage, which even threatens the survival of marine life.

In addition to plastic bags, paper shopping bags are also a major environmental hazard. Environmental experts gave a surprising number of figures: In order to cope with the demand for 10 billion paper bags a year in the United States, 14 million trees have been felled each year.

As to why the tax was to be set at 17 cents, officials from the Environment Bureau explained that this was in line with the government's cost of cleaning up plastic bags, which meant that the government spent 17 cents for every plastic bag cleaned.

Rose is an official of the San Francisco legislature and he is very much in favor of taxing shopping bags: "This policy is perfectly feasible for a city of this size in San Francisco. We are trying to guide people to use reusable bags, or It is a shopping bag made from recycled materials that slowly replaces existing plastic bags and paper bags. I believe this will become a trend."

It is reported that the entire state of California considers issuing similar policies at the end of the year. The state legislator Paul, for example, said: "Australia, Ireland, Bangladesh and other countries began to collect taxes on shopping bags as early as in 2002, and each received 15 cents in Ireland. Other countries also have initiatives such as Russian shopping. At the same time, it usually uses the mesh bags and four-wheel shopping carts, which have become the habit of people there. In contrast, our manufacturers and retailers only consider their own profits and try to create convenience for customers. The huge bills can only be paid by the government."