Plastic bags have become one of the most pervasive consumer items on Earth,  500 billion to 1 trillion consumed each year. They pile-up under our sinks and in our closets. We intuitively know we should not throw them away, but if you don’t have a dog to pick up after, what can you do with them? Our voracious consumption and quick disposal of plastic bags is causing significant environmental damages.

To deal with these “urban tumbleweeds,” Washington, D.C. has recently implemented an ordinance to require shoppers to pay for their consumption. But, D.C. is not the first place to place a tax on plastic bags. In 2002 Ireland placed a twenty-two-cent fee on all plastic bags. Known as the PlasTax, the fee was explicitly designed to change consumers’ behavior and accomplished amazing results. The use of plastic bags in Ireland dropped by more than 90 percent. The fee also raised approximately 3.5 million Euros in extra revenue that was earmarked for environmental projects.

Although the success of Ireland’s PlasTax was highly publicized, taxing consumers to influence behavior did not quickly spread to the United States. San Francisco implemented an ordinance in 2007 that banned large stores from providing traditional plastic bags. Instead, stores were encouraged to provide compostable plastic bags, which could be included in the City’s curbside compost program. After the publicity around San Francisco’s ordinance, many other municipalities began looking into banning traditional plastic bags in exchange for compostable bags. However, without a municipal curbside compost program, compostable plastic bags do not provide a viable alternative.

Attention was re-established around a fee on plastic bags in 2008 when New York City Mayor Bloomberg proposed a six-cent fee for every plastic bag needed at the register. One-cent would return to the storeowner as an incentive for compliance. The rest would be used to generate funds for other environmental projects. However, in order for the city to impose a tax, it must gain approval from the State Legislature, which is not likely to happen.

On Earth Day 2009 Senator James Moran of Virginia proposed an amendment to the Internal Revenue Code known as the Plastic Bag Reduction Act, which would impose a five-cent fee on any single-use carry out bags after January 1, 2010. Revenue from this amendment would be divided between several programs; a one-cent tax credit retained by retailers implementing the program, another one-cent would go to the Land and Water Conservation Fund to clean up pollution, another one-cent would be dedicated to state and local trash reduction and watershed protection programs, and the remaining two-cents would go toward paying off the national debt. The Plastic Bag Reduction Act was referred to the House Ways and Means Committee and the House Natural Resources Committee, but no action was taken on it before the end of 2009. It is likely that a similar amendment will be re-proposed this year.

However, a fee on single-use plastic bags was successfully established in Washington, D.C. In June 2009, the Washington D.C. City Council approved the Anacostia River Clean Up and Protection Act of 2009. The act bans the use of non-recyclable plastic carryout bags and assesses consumers a five-cent fee per recyclable carryout bag. Under the act, a fee is imposed regardless of whether the bag is paper or plastic, and each bag must be composed of a specific recycled content and be clearly labeled “Please Recycle This Bag.” One-cent of the revenue created is retained by the retail establishment while the rest is deposited into the Anacostia River Clean Up and Protection Fund to be used for the sole purpose of cleaning and protecting the Anacostia River and surrounding impaired waterways.

The Anacostia River Clean Up and Protection Act went into effect on January 1, 2010. Stores are already reporting a dramatic drop in bag use. As D.C.ers have time to grow accustomed to paying for grocery bags (or bringing in their own cloth bags to the store), it is likely that other municipalities and possibly states will consider implementing a similar fee.