Dear PoP – Bag Tax/Fee For Paper Bags Too? Is it Working?

Photo by PoPville flickr user Mr. T in DC

“Dear PoP,

I just got back from Merzi, the new “fast casual” Indian joint on 7th Street, near the Verizon Center. The food was good. The concept appears to have been ripped off from Chipotle, and I think it will do well.

Anyway, I had take out and noticed I got assessed $0.05 for the bag tax. Now, I am not by any means sweating the 5 cent tax at all, but the strange thing is the bag that the food came in was paper. I thought the tax was only for plastic bags. Is the operator into some “Office Space” decimal rounding type scam?

I am sure that the assessment of the tax is pretty inconsistent across the city. I support the tax, since it will/has cut down on plastic bag consumption. Do you know of any recent data that shows how much waste the tax has prevented and how much money the tax has raised?”

First I know some people are gonna get upset by the use of the word tax. So tax or other people like to call it a fee, but bottom line is yes, it applies to paper bags as well.

There are reports that $150,000 was raised in January and the number of plastic bags used plummeted. Anyone know how much total money has been raised so far?

Have you guys noticed that your habits of changed? Do you mostly use reusable bags now?