ASK A YOOPER: A plastic bag tax could mean a cleaner Mat-Su

It came as kind of a surprise, the introduction of a proposed “tax” on plastic shopping bags at Tuesday evening’s regular Mat-Su Borough Assembly meeting.

Michigan, my home state, is one of, at last count, 10 states that — despite the very deep and politically deft pockets of the U.S. beverage and beverage container industries, which includes producers and bottlers of water, soda, beer, along with grocery and convenience store owners and lobbyists, passed a bottle deposit law in 1978.

At 10 cents per container, my former digs, touts the highest (most costly) deposit in the country. An extra six-pack for a weekend camping trip will run ya 60 cents. But the loss is temporary. Bring the container back to any store that sells that brand and you get your 60 cents back. As a whipper-snapper growing up a couple blocks north of Eight Mile Road I remember what the Metropolitan Detroit area looked like before the law took effect.

According to what I can find online, Michigan now touts the highest beverage container recycling rate in the nation at 97 percent. I share these tidbits with you for a reason.

Almost ready to celebrate my first year of residency in the great place we call Alaska—and more specifically the Mat-Su, there is one thing that floored me when breakup came this year. That was the amount of plastic that littered every side road, both the Parks and Glenn highways, KGB, and even heading north out Wasilla and Palmer Fishhook roads. Plastic shopping bags were the most common, by far, but the litter also included cups and lids of all sizes, bottles, five-gallon pails, and plenty more.

I mention Michigan and its bottle bill mainly because of the added beneficial effect of making a very noticeable dent in the state’s overall litter. My unscientific and non-data driven observations lead me to believe that a direct cause-and-effect relationship began shortly after the bill’s implementation and continues on to this day.

I’m middle-aged. I grew up in a time where rivers actually caught fire because of the amount of pollutants poured into them. I remember not being able to swim in lakes because of high levels of various waste products, besides human, circulating in them…belching smokestacks giving off noxious fumes and partially blocking out the sun even on the brightest of days.

It goes without saying that the United States has has become a throw-away society and plastic leads the way. When I was a mere pup, there were very few, if any, plastic food containers. As far as I can tell, it all began with Tupperware in the mid- 1940’s. But the product came with a lifetime warranty. If it didn’t do its job, it was replaced free of charge.

Everything from Pepsi and Coca-Cola to peanut butter and ketchup came in glass containers. TV dinners and pot pies were clad in aluminum foil. The microwave oven was something only well-to-do folks could afford, so the use of plastic was nowhere near what it is today.

Enough reminiscing. I understand a lot of those glass containers ended up in a licensed landfill. But at least they STAYED there. It was also the age of recycling. I remember having newspaper drives at school to fund various extra-curricular activities. Americans were at least making a conscious effort to better the environment in some way.

Last August, along my 3,000-mile trek from the south shore of Lake Superior to the Mat-Su, I stopped at a Walmart in a town in British Columbia—can’t remember the name. I picked up a few snack items and pop and ventured to the self-checkout line and got ready to scan. Before I could proceed, the “electronic clerk” wanted to know if I had my own bags.

I hit the “no” button. I heard a “beep” and discovered I was being charged a nickel for the plastic shopping bag. Now I keep at least three large reusable bags in the Tahoe, but because I had lived in it for the past four days, the bags were buried under who knows what. Sure I was taken aback and muttered a few expletives under my breath when I saw the nickel charge, but it wasn’t a big deal. I wasn’t fond of not being told of the cost beforehand, but then again, I was a stranger in a foreign country.

Since my arrival, a vast majority of the places I’ve shopped from Fairbanks to the Mat-Su to Anchorage and Valdez stuff things into those thin plastic bags. Personally speaking, I made the change from plastic to paper and eventually to reusable bags several years ago. Because they are biodegradable and compostable, they are ecologically a much better alternative. As far as I can tell, paper bags seem to be a rare breed here in Alaska.

Back to plastic bags and action at Tuesday’s borough meeting. Introduced by District Six Assemblywoman Barbara Doty, Ordinance 17-099 would impose “a …10-cent per bag tax on large retailers who bring plastic carry out bags into the (Mat-Su) and deliver those bags to customers.” The proposed legislation is just that at this point. It must still go through all the hoops of any borough-enacted law or regulation.

According to borough data, Mat-Su residents use approximately 21,000,000 plastic bags annually. With a total population of just over 100,000, that works out to about 210 bags annually for each person. The standard sized bag lying flat is roughly 1’x1’—not including the approximate five-inch “handle”. If I did my math correctly, laid end-to-end, the Mat-Su’s yearly bag usage would stretch about 331.5 miles.

As it stands in its infancy, the ordinance does not directly charge the end-user, or consumer. It stipulates that large stores with a $1 million or more in annual sales such as Target, Home Depot, Walmart, Fred Meyer and the like pay the tax for each bag they distribute.More than likely, the stores will find a way to pass the fee along to the public, but then again, maybe not.

The solution to all of this is an easy one. The more shoppers that bring their own reusable bags into the stores, the less those businesses will distribute. The less distributed, the less “tax” is forked out by them. The result is a much cleaner Mat-Su.

For those of you who balk at the idea of reusable shopping bags, I ask that you just try it for a couple of weeks. Like any repetitive action, it becomes habitual. But I feel this is a good habit. It took me a bit to get in the swing of making sure I had enough bags in tow, but I got there. Many businesses offer cheap, if not free, reusable consumer bags. They are a lot more sturdy than the flimsy, see-through plastic models.

Now, if I go into a store and forget my reusables, I feel the shame of a boy who let someone down by breaking a promise. But, on those occasions where I do end up with a plastic bag in my mitts, after I get home they are knotted up and placed inside an open plastic bag. When that bag gets full, it—and usually 15-20 12-packs of assorted cans, steel cans and lids, and junk mail— makes it over to the Valley Community for Recycling Solutions (VCRS) on Palmer Wasilla Highway or to one of the borough’s transfer stations with drop-off recycling.

Contact reporter Chris Ford at 352-2270 or chris.ford@frontiersman.com