YES!!!!

Province To Give You Incentives To Reuse Plastic Shopping Bags
Wednesday May 9, 2007

You use about four of them a week individually. Ontario residents use about seven million of them daily. They're plastic bags and they're good for lots of things -holding your groceries, carrying your papers and stowing that nasty stuff your dog did in the park. But they're bad for the environment. The sacks don't biodegrade and no one's quite sure just how long they last in landfills. Toronto councillor and environmentalist Gord Perks claims it could be hundreds or even "thousands of years." Which is why the McGuinty government is about to offer you a velvet glove to get you to reduce your dependence on them.

The Liberals are set to announce a program that will see shoppers rewarded with everything from incentives to extra Air Miles points for reusing their existing bags - or putting newly purchased reusable containers to work as they shop. The plan will involve almost every store in the province as a means to get consumers to control the endless use of the plastic carry-alls.

Several places - most notably San Francisco, which banned the bags to big fanfare last March - have restrictions in place. And there are forms of controls in Ireland and one small Manitoba town. Our measures won't be quite as serious as an outright prohibition - yet. But what happens if Ontario residents 'bag' to differ and don't respond to the plea? After a suitable trial period - with a goal to cut the use in half within the next five years - tougher measures could be introduced that will hit you in the wallet to force your compliance.

The city of Toronto has already flirted with imposing a 25-cent levy on each plastic bag you use. And many no-frill-like stores have limited programs in place that charge customers five cents a bag and encourage them to bring their own plastic containers to use again. And almost all sell reusable cloth bags for a small fee.

But in a technologically advanced world, there's a certain irony in what may be yet to come - the possible re-introduction of those old brown paper sacks shoppers once used in the 40s, 50s and 60s, as the need for recycling literally take us back to the future.