Contemporary Business 14th Edition by Louis Boone, David Kurtz

Exercise 3

How Much Would You Pay for a Plastic Shopping Bag? The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that almost 4 billion tons of plastics waste-in the form of bags, sacks, and wrapping-were generated in one year. Made from foreign oil, the plastic can take 1,000 years to degrade. Only about 1 percent is ever recycled.A growing number of people want to reduce these statistics. For instance, San Francisco enacted an outright ban on plastic bags. New York City started requiring certain retailers to accept plastic bags for recycling. Los Angeles also banned plastic bags. In a first, Washington, D.C., imposed a tax of 5 cents on every plastic bag for supermarket customers. The city plans to use the revenue to restore a polluted local river.But such laws have not always met with approval. In eco-friendly Seattle, voters overturned a law charging 20 cents per plastic bag, perhaps because they were already recycling and reusing the bags. The mayor of Washington, D.C., hopes that the tax on plastic bags will encourage shoppers to change their habits so they won't have to pay the tax at all.The retailing giant Walmart already sells reusable bags for 50 cents. In three of its California stores, it is introducing the option of a 15 cent reusable bag that is expected to survive 75 shopping trips. The bag can then be recycled in existing bins in the stores.
-Can stores that provide eco-friendly shopping bags or other ways to reduce the polluting effects of plastic reap promotional benefits from their efforts? How can cities that ban or tax plastic bags promote their actions?