Apr

18

Bagging plastic

April 18, 2008 | 2 Comments | Joshua Gans

So Peter Garrett failed to get the States to agree on what to do about plastic bags. In the media, it is apparently some sort of disaster. But when you look at what is going to happen, there may be some excellent outcomes from this.

What is going to happen? South Australia is going to ban plastic bags. This seems insane but so be it. Victoria, on the other hand, is going to trial a levy on plastic bags in two regional centres or localities. Now the word ‘trial’ is what is encouraging. So rather than blindly go into a policy they are going to see how it goes in a few areas. That way they can measure costs, the impact on bag use and, importantly, the impact on the number of gaps that end up in the natural environment. Of course, they have to measure those things before and after the policy and I urge them to put the informational gathering processes into place. But it is a good approach.

In this regard, even SA’s seemingly crazy approach can be measured for impact and compared with the trials and the status quo. So the lack of agreement has an opportunity for all to learn about what the best way forward is. Now who can bag such diversity?


Comments

2 Responses to “Bagging plastic”

  1. ric lucas on April 21st, 2008 5:25 pm

    Of course this demonstrates one advantage of Federalism- you do get to trial different policies…

  2. christine on April 22nd, 2008 3:19 am

    Of course, you have to have some disagreements in order to get the trials – which is why it’s so nice that Canada has Quebec.