Toronto Plastic Bag Research Full of Holes
Martin C. Winer
The City of Toronto has undertaken a goal of 70% waste diversion from landfill. In order to achieve this goal, City Council asked staff to prepare a report [1] which considers plastic bags along with several other ‘target materials’. Insofar as plastic bags are concerned, both the preliminary research and the resulting plastic bag tax by-law are full of holes. One hopes that they are printed on recycled paper because that is likely the only good either will do for the environment.
Legal Foundation:
City staff typically requests legal counsel in preparing their reports. The October 2008 report concluded that the City of Toronto did not have the authority to impose a plastic bag tax based on the powers afforded it under the City of Toronto Act. The City of Toronto Act (Section 8(2)) gives the city the right to issue by laws pertaining to the “Economic, social and environmental well-being of the City.” [2] The city staff believed that a plastic bag tax which would appeal to this provision “is not possible under the current City of Toronto Act, which only permits a sales tax to be applied to alcohol, tobacco and admission on places of amusement.” [3] The word ‘plastic’ is not only a noun but also an adjective meaning capable of being molded. Evidently the legal eagles in City Council were able to use the latter meaning of ‘plastic’ to mold the blunt instrument of “environmental well-being” into a targeted attack on plastic bags.
Staff recommended a discount to incentivize reduction, not a punitive surtax
“A tax or fee on plastic retail shopping bags is not feasible under the City of Toronto Act, but the waste reduction benefit of a financial incentive is apparent.” [4] The city staff thus recommended that the City incentivize reduction via mandating a discount for using reusable bags. “Staff recommends a per-bag discount of $0.10 to effectively drive source reduction behaviour by providing a reasonable financial incentive to reduce plastic retail shopping bag use.” [5] If City staff recommended a per bag discount, why does the resulting by-law impose a per bag tax? Galen Weston, CEO of the Loblaws chain, caught wind of the impending legislation and paid Mayor Miller a visit. He suggested that offering a 10 cent discount would be “prohibitive” and negotiated a 5 cent surtax instead. [6] Bearing in mind the ‘hard bargain’ Mayor Miller drove in resolving the garbage strike, it’s likely that Mayor Miller let Weston finish his plea and then in a ‘Jerry Maguire moment’ told him: “You had me at ‘hello’.”
Plastic Bags Levy has the luck of the Irish
In March 2002 the Irish government introduced a levy on plastic bags (colloquially referred to as the “PlasTax”). The report to council claims that the Irish program was a huge success with: “a 94% reduction in the use of plastic bags (from 328 bags per capita to 21 bags per capita) in three years.” [7] As is often the case with political speak, the devil is in the details. ‘A 94% reduction’ where? Perhaps the supermarkets realized a 94% reduction in demand, but are we to believe that the Irish suddenly stopped lining their kitchen bins with plastic? Charlie Mayfield chairman of UK retailer John Lewis remarked that the Irish tax “had reduced [retail] plastic bag usage, but sales of bin liners had increased 400 per cent.” [8] With regards to a meaningful reduction in plastic bags making it to the landfill, diminishing the supply at the supermarket ‘borrows from Peter to pay Paul’.
Why 5 cents?
Staff’s report also suggests that the Irish PlasTax “charged 15 Euro cents ($0.24 CAN) starting in 2002 and was raised to 22 Euro cents ($0.35 CAN) in 2007.” [9] The fee needed to be raised because “The use of bags increased to 33 bags per capita in early 2007, prompting officials to raise the levy.” [10] Staff’s further research revealed that: “a per-bag fee of $0.10 to $0.35 [(CAN)] would significantly reduce the consumer use of retail plastic shopping bags.” [11] Thus it’s a mystery how City Council arrived at a 5 cent levy in the face of their own research which suggests the amount is too low to be effective.
What about Paper Bags?
There is a conspicuous absence of paper bags in the staff report. Recall that, historically, plastic bags were brought in to replace paper bags which were considered deleterious to the environment. Conversely the final by-law states: “Persons carrying on a retail business in a retail business establishment who do not offer or provide plastic retail shopping bags to customers shall offer or provide alternatives, such as cardboard boxes or paper bags, at no charge to the customer.” [12] In fact, in Taiwan where a plastic bag levy was imposed, it was subsequently lifted in the case of fast food venues because too many were offering free paper bags, thus increasing overall pollution.
In Manhattan Beach, California the ‘Save the Plastic Bag Coalition’ launched a successful action against the municipality which had banned the sale of plastic bags. In his ruling, The Honorable David P. Yaffe wrote: “The basis for challenge is that the adoption of the ordinance violates the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) because the City did not adopt an Environmental Impact Report that compares plastic bags and paper bags and determines which of the two has a greater negative impact on the environment.” [13] Ruling in favour of the challenge he continues: “The Administrative Record in this case contains substantial evidence to support a fair argument that the prohibition of the distribution of plastic bags to customers will result in a net increase, rather than a net decrease, in damage to the environment.” [14]
Misleading Statistics
A philosopher, a mathematician and a statistician are all asked “what is 2 + 2”. The philosopher ruminates for several days and eventually asks “what do you mean by 2 + 2?” The mathematician quickly says “4” and then proceeds to issue a 400 page proof thereof. The statistician draws the blinds and closes the door and asks “what do you want the answer to be?” There are evidently many statisticians at work in the city staff:
“Conclusions from Stewardship Ontario audit data (2005), presented to the In-Store Packaging Waste Diversion Working group, estimate an average of 8.8 plastic retail shopping bags generated, per household, per week in Toronto. This represents a total generation in Toronto of 457.6 million plastic retail shopping bags per year and, with each bag weighing 6 grams, 2745.6 tonnes per year, which is approximately 6,900 cubic meters of landfill capacity per year. Plastic bags do not degrade significantly over time and therefore this volume of plastic bags will persist if landfilled.” [15]
These statistics are meaningless in that they neglect to mention how many of the plastic bags are recycled or reused. The plastic bags of concern are the ones which are the surplus bags which are thrown out empty. These statistics make no attempt to distinguish between the source and use of the plastic bags.
The City of Toronto currently accepts plastic bags for recycling in their Blue Box Program. How many of the 8.8 plastic bags per week are thus recycled? Plastic bags are frequently reused as trash bin liners, indeed green box liners. How many of the 8.8 plastic bags were used as garbage bags? Succinctly, don’t judge a pile of trash simply by its cover.
While the City of Toronto decries plastic’s inability to degrade, they are talking out of both sides of their legislative mouths when they then forbid retailers from offering compostable plastic bags: “Retail business[es] … are prohibited from offering or providing … non-compatible plastic bags,” (City of Toronto By-law No. 356-2009, 604-4) Non-compatible bags in turn are those “that are not compatible with the City’s blue bin recycling program and includ[ing] … biodegradable plastic bags or compostable plastic bags…” (City of Toronto By-law No. 356-2009, 604-1) [16] The use of compostable bags is prohibited because they interfere with the recycling of regular plastic bags!
Further, the staff report fails to mention how much 6,900 cubic meters of landfill capacity is as a proportion of the total. The 2005 Solid Waste Multiyear Business Plan mentions that in “2003, about 1 million tones of material were collected from 1,000,000 units.” [17] So if we take 2745.6 tonnes per year and divide through by 1,000,000 tonnes per year, we get 0.2%. So after all the fuss and commotion, City Council has managed to achieve 0.2% of its 70% goal. There is an old Greek idiom which runs “the mills of the Gods grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly small. If this be virtue, then Mayor Miller’s environmental stewardship is saintly in that his millstones have ground both very slowly and with exceedingly small results.
[1] http://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2008/pw/bgrd/backgroundfile-17097.pdf
[2] http://www.canlii.ca/en/on/laws/stat/so-2006-c-11-sch-a/latest/so-2006-c-11-sch-a.html Section 8(2)
[3] http://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2008/pw/bgrd/backgroundfile-17097.pdf (p. 12)
[4] http://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2008/pw/bgrd/backgroundfile-17097.pdf (p. 12)
[5] http://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2008/pw/bgrd/backgroundfile-17097.pdf (p. 12)
[6] http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/toronto/archive/2009/06/01/5-cent-bag-tax-now-in-effect.aspx
[7] http://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2008/pw/bgrd/backgroundfile-17097.pdf (p. 11)
[8] http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article3508263.ece
[9] http://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2008/pw/bgrd/backgroundfile-17097.pdf (pps. 11-12)
[10] ibid
[11] ibid
[12] http://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/By-laws/2009/law0356.pdf (604, 3C)
[13] http://www.savetheplasticbag.com/UploadedFiles/Manhattan Beach ruling.pdf
[14] ibid
[15] http://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2008/pw/bgrd/backgroundfile-17097.pdf (p. 8)
Pot calling the kettle black. Your information regarding the Irish levy as presented is not helpful, and misleads the reader to conclude, because bag consumption went down by 84% but liner sales went up by 400% that there was a net increase in plastic consumption. The only useful numbers would the actual weights of the two. In other words, if each person dropped the consumption of bags from 100 lbs per year to 4 lbs (a reduction of 94 lbs, but went from 10 lbs of liners to 40 lbs per year (an increase of 400% in liner sales), then the law was effective – net reduction of of 54 lbs per capita.
Your suggestion that the law is illegal is also inconclusive. This is not a “Sales Tax” – no money is collected by the City. As far as I know, no one has challenged this law, and you are further assuming City staff consulted legal, and that legal council was correct.
This law is about changing people’s behavior. I concur that 5 cents was too low; however, establishing the idea, then raising it later is not a bad strategy rather than going in high and facing greater opposition. I support the fee vs the ‘incentive’ as I think the retailers who benefit have the choice to roll it back into discounts (this is a highly competitive market, so I think this in fact would happen, and also helps the smaller retailers, as opposed to asking them all to raise food costs to compensate for the incentive).