Michael,

Thanks for posting this. Even those of us who are using canvass bags have work to do; insisting every time we go to a store for one or two items and happen to be without our reusable bag that, no, really, we don't need a plastic bag.

I'm encouraged that Whole Foods is eliminating plastic bags from all of its stores starting this EarthDay. It sends a strong message, and it encourages their shoppers to buy reusable bags which they hopefully will end up using in other stores, spreading the message that way.

PD columnist Connie Schultz wrote about personally quitting plastic bags this week. She writes:

When I started writing this column, there were 47,055,984,738 reasons to stop using plastic bags. That was the number of bags consumed so far in the world this year, according to the Web site, reusablebags.com.

I thought it was enough that I reused the plastic bags, but they still end up in the trash. The site lists all kinds of harrowing statistics, including this one: Hundreds of thousands of sea turtles, whales and other marine life die every year after eating discarded plastic bags they mistake for food.

The wake up call for me was seeing the LA Times' Pulitzer Prize winning series Altered Oceans. The online content is amazing, including video and photos of scenes like Midway Island in the Pacific Ocean where a patch of plastic debris twice the size of Texas washes up.

We need an effort that encourages more retailers to ban plastic bags. Or we can consider a tax on plastic bags as they did in Ireland (see Susan's comment above). We can begin by thinking through how to implement a ban or tax, maybe at the county level, and how do we encourage retailers (by researching how it works in Ireland and San Francisco and coming up with a transition strategy, I think). We'll collect ideas on how to do this here.

I wrote about this a year ago when the arts tax was out there for consideration. It happens in Ireland to great success. Frankly, I think arts money might come from imported cheese and wine, but a plastax makes a lot of sense. We can all decide to forgo the tax by bringing our own bags (reuse) and this does not impinge on the poor as much an imposed sales tax increase. Here's more on the subject. We are a bit behind the curve in NEO as you know, Michael. We have yet to have a sewer district that will be able to ask for more money from vendors with large parking lots as a stormwater utility because it has done such a poor job of managing the money and waste it currently stewards. However, other cities have stormwater utilities and residents can lower their sewer bills by holding stormwater on their property reducing the volume for the utility. Not in NEO. We are strapped to the ticking bomb of what our "leaders" determine is a good solution. We individually can remember to reuse bags or carry backpacks or canvas bags, but I wouldn't hold your breath for a progressive tax like this one in our region. Our leaders prefer the pre-New Deal methods. Best bet is to suggest it to taxin' Tim Hagan. He seems to be the  Numero Uno tax man in our region. I'm sure the county would like to have all the good suggestions they can get. They certainly need the cash. It won't be an environmental cause, but you could help them sell it that way. Here ya go Tim, a way to green your tax profile!