Arizona House Bill Demands Plastic Bag Recycling

The environment is taking a front seat in recent days with state representatives in Arizona: there is a new bill on the table, and it has its sights set on plastic bags. The bill, sponsored by AZ State Rep. Nancy Young Wright, asks national retailers and “big-box stores” to employ recycling programs for their plastic shopping bags or risk facing some major fines.

House Bill 2416 would require national chains and stores 10,000 square feet or more in size to create such recycling programs. Fines for noncompliance would range from $100 to $500 per violation under the bill.

Mom-and-Pop shops would be exempt from the bill, lest they risk going bankrupt over a few bags (not a risk that would make this bill a winning proposition in many people’s eyes), so this is all for the big stores. This, however, begs the question — is $500 enough? While it might actually scare the smaller corner stores straight, will $500 out of the pockets of a major corporation be enough to change their ways? Maybe with enough store locations, the loss of savings will add up enough to make a difference.

At any rate, let’s hope so.

Tuesday, January 20th, 2009 at 9:34 am and is filed under The Daily. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.