plastic bags in numbers

When the State does some social engineering with the various tools available to them, specifically taxes, I am always curious to discover if it worked out as intended, if they hit their goals, if it had less of an effect than expected or more or just what they expected, etc. Sometimes we are made aware of the results with various headlines and reports, but more often than not, we rarely seem to hear any follow up. I guess if you were really researching it you could find out, but the general articles on these things are often scarce, unless there is a particular interest in the matter.

The taxes on plastic bags in supermarkets is actually one of those things that has actually been followed up decently with the occasional article in general media letting us know how it is going. Maybe because it was so successful, I don't know.

Today we get more info on the effect of the tax on plastic bags. The tax went into effect in 2017 and the latest report compares the overall effect of the tax as of 2022, compared to 2016 right before the tax went into effect.

I would note that in many places in the Western world, plastic bags have been outright banned from use, at least from major supermarkets. You go into stores in Europe and you hardly see any plastic available. The USA is pretty close to the same, if perhaps there is still a little bit available in some places.

So, back to the report just put out by the Ministry of Agriculture, as reported on in Behadrei... As a caveat, the report was put out today because today is International No Single Use Plastic Bag Day - not nearly as  fun as International Eat Ice Cream For Breakfast Dat, but still a day of note. 

According to the report, the tax on plastic bags in supermarkets has been very successful at achieving its stated goals - decreasing significantly the use of such bags. In 2022 supermarkets sold 474 million plastic bags to customers. Sounds like a lot but back in 2016 before the tax went into effect, 1.754 billion bags were sold to customers - a dramatic decrease of 73% ! In 2021 501 million bags were sold, so the decrease got even deeper in 2022.

Other numbers for comparison would be the 5494 tons of bags purchased by supermarkets for use of their customers in 2022, compared to 9650 tons purchased in 2016.

It looks like taxes can be used to successfully social engineer society. If they want to slap taxes on other items (hint hint, sugary soft drinks) to train us to stop using them, they should look at what they did right with the plastic bags tax.

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