Toronto’s (now former) idiotic 5-cent fee for plastic bags

cutlerish: Plastic bags are not great by any stretch of the imagination. The 5-cent fee to get one was idiotic and poorly-planned.

Toronto had already been (mostly successfully) finding plastic bag recycling initiatives to work with. Once the 5-cent fee went into effect, this was scrapped. Yet people still bought plastic bags.

Reusable bags are not permanent. When one breaks, where does it end up? The landfill. Which is a damn sight worse than recycling plastic bags.

You’d also think that this 5-cent fee meant to discourage people from using environmentally-unfriendly products could actually be used to help pay for existing recycling and waste reclamation projects? Yeah, no. Maybe if it had been planned ahead, that would have been the case. Even 2 cents out of the fee would be a lot. However, that money goes into the store’s pockets. Even when the fee was actually in effect. It is no different if they are still charging now.

Banning plastic bags should have been the option they chose, assuming city council had considered the fact that they would be able to recycle plastic bags.

Finally, that’s what they’re doing.