Plastic bag tax generated over $6 million
Fairfax County’s plastic bag tax has generated over $6.2 million in revenue since it took effect on Jan. 1, 2022, the county reports.
The largest share of those funds supported Operation Stream Shield, a program that pays homeless people for temporary work removing debris from streams and other locations. Funds also went to waste collection at commuter lots, the Zero Waste program, compost collections at farmers markets, the removal of illegal signs, and other programs.
Customers are charged a 5-cent tax on each disposable plastic bag provided at grocery stores, convenience stores, and drugstores.
The tax was established to reduce the amount of plastic bags that end up in streams and along roadways. Plastics do not biodegrade. Instead, they break down into tiny pieces that harm wildlife and get into food and drinking water.
According to Clean Fairfax, one reusable bag can offset more than 500 single-use plastic bags.
Under Virginia law, revenue from the tax must be used for any of these four purposes: (1) education on environmental waste reduction; (2) environmental cleanup; (3) pollution and litter mitigation; and (4) the provision of reusable bags to recipients of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) or Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) benefits.
11 responses to “Plastic bag tax generated over $6 million”
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Finally some good news about the environment! Plus I’m seeing fewer plastic bags caught in trees and bushes along the roadways. This is a great program.
People need to remember to bring their reusable bags in ALL stores, not just grocery stores. I keep mine in the car and use them at drugstores, department stores and home improvement stores too. Every little bit helps—as evidenced by raising $6+ million in increments of 5 cents.
Great advice Pam! What a delight to have some good news for the environment. I too have noticed fewer plastic bags in trees.
Let’s do some math here:
First, the parameters: of the 5c charged, in the year 2022, 2c goes to the store and 3c goes to the county. In the years 2023 and 2024, 1c goes to the store and 4c goes to the county. Per the county, the $6.2M in revenue is across Jan 2022 to Aug 2024
Thus here is the true breakdown year to year:
In the year 2022, $2,005,159.38 in revenue was collected meaning that 66,838,646 bags were taxed that year. In the year 2023, $2,608,992.20 in revenue was collected, meaning that 65,224,805 bags were taxed. This is a net decrease in 1,613,841 bags taxed compared to 2022. In this year, 2024 we have incomplete data. But so far, $1,632,125.22 has been collected as of August. If we linearly interpolate that number out to December, approximately 2,448,187.84 will be collected this year, meaning that 61,204,696 bags would would be taxed. Note that this is probably low as the total number of bags taxed on a month to month basis increases in the months of november and december historically. But if interpolation holds, that is a total decrease in 5,633,950 bags on a year to year basis compared to 2022.
Now what does this mean? Well the county has 1,144,447 residents in 2024 and 1,139,000 residents in 2022 when this started. That means that in 2022, each resident was using
That means that on a per resident basis, each resident has decreased their bag usage from 58 bags per year to 53 bags per year. This is a decrease of 8%.
Was a decrease in 8% bag usage really worth it? I don’t think so. We had to grow the government to standup a regulatory body to enforce the tax collection and to process the taxes collected. The regulatory burden on small mom and pop shops significantly increased as they now have to comply and report how much bag taxes they collect. If this program were effective, we would have seen a 20% to 30% decrease in the total number of bags used. It is time to abandon this growth of government and fire the employees that manage this program. The juice is not worth the squeeze.
Well when you consider that the county has net negative population gain year over year, meaning the total number of residents is decreasing over time, some of this decrease could be written off due to that.
To increase the performance of the program one could increase the tax. At 5 cents per plastic bag, it can take 20-100 uses before a consumer recuperates the cost spent on a canvas reusable bag ($1-$5). At $0.05, the plastic bag tax is a minor annoyance for most shoppers. Double the tax, and you halve break even time.
If one were to make the tax $0.5-$5 per plastic bag you’d see people adopt the canvas ones real quick and the number of plastic bags purchased would plummet.
Yeah increasing it to half a dollar and then small increments you would do a lot
Reusable bags are filled with bacteria that spread disease (look up the independent debt studies on this). Washing the reusable bags puts toxic detergent in our waterways.
So….you take carry your groceries home by hand? Those carry germs too, and soap and hand sanitizer are toxic!
Get real.
I went to the ABC store. They gave me a plastic bag for my alcohol and didn’t charge me for it. Is a government owned establishment exempt from their own rules?
The revenue from the bag tax is supposed to go to environmental projects like the ones listed here.
The revenue was $6 million, and $2 million went to those projects. Where did the other 2/3 of the money, the missing $4 million, go?
(Maybe it was in the article and I missed it?)
It pays for our lazy supervisors to just chill out, man.
I like the canvas bags at Trader Joe’s. Spacious, durable, and stylish at $4 each. Easy to wash and hang dry.