Ireland rid itself of a plastic nuisance
Overdue.
Irish shoppers with cloth shopping bags
There is something missing from this otherwise typical bustling cityscape.
There are taxis and buses. There are hip bars and pollution. Every other person is holding a cellphone to his ear. But there are no plastic bags, the ubiquitous symbol of urban life.
In a determined attempt to deal with litter, Ireland passed a plastic bag tax in 2002 - now 22 euro cents, about 33 U.S. cents - at the register if you want one with your purchases. There was an advertising awareness campaign. Then something happened that was bigger than the sum of these parts.
Within weeks, there was a 94 percent drop in plastic bag use. Within a year, nearly everyone bought reusable cloth bags, which they now keep in the office and the back of their cars. Plastic bags became socially unacceptable - on par with wearing a fur coat or not cleaning up after your dog…
Before the so called plas tax, Ireland was struggling with a plastic bag problem that is typical in much of the world. Frank Convery, a professor at University College Dublin and head of ENFO, Ireland’s environmental information service, said: “You’d be driving in the Irish countryside and the sides of the roads were covered in plastic - when the foliage dropped off in the fall what was left on branches was a bunch of old plastic bags waving in the wind. That’s gone and people love it.”
Do Americans care what their neighborhood looks like?
Posted: Fri - February 1, 2008 at 10:48 AM