Organic bags: to avoid them, we buy less fruit and plastic-packaged produce. The problems of a crazy law.

Following the introduction of mandatory, paid biodegradable shopping bags, consumers reduced their purchases of loose fruit and vegetables (-7,8 percent), while increasing those packaged in plastic trays (+11 percent). Polluting plastic.

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biodegradable bag tax

BIODEGRADABLE BAGS TAX

A foolish and opaque law could only produce damage to consumersThis is what's happening with the new legislation requiring the purchase of organic bags for fruit and vegetables. A cost that consumers, rightly, don't want to bear, which is why they're taking a different approach. How? Reducing fruit and vegetable purchases (which have fallen by 7,8 percent in recent months), and here the damage is to the entire supply chain. And instead increasing the purchase of pre-packaged fruit and vegetables (up 11 percent over the same period): and here we are at the mockery, as these packages are nothing more than plastic trays, and non-biodegradable ones at that. The boomerang effect was written in the absurd way in which a law was drafted that is only harming consumers and the environment, a law we have also empirically verified in the field.

I'm going to supermarket for a quick fruit and vegetable shopping, and I discover the sting, a real mini-tax, green-filled. I buy a kilo of mandarins on sale at 0.99 euros a kilo, weigh them, but I have to add another 4 cents to the bill for the bag. Then it's the turn of the bananas, on sale at 1,90: here too there's the extra for the bag, another four cents. And the same goes for the Annurche apples, the zucchini, the carrotsIn the end, when I go to the checkout and check out, paying another 8 cents for another bag containing all the others, I discover that for a mini-expense of about 14 euros, I've paid almost half a euro for bags. Eco-friendly as you like, but expensive as gold. A waste, and a hidden increase in spending, thanks to the new law, which came into force on January 1, 2018, which requires the use, for a fee, of biodegradable bags for the purchase of fresh products, starting with fruit and vegetables.

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SHOPPING BAG TAX

This law, which is supposed to reduce waste and pollution, actually has only one advantage: increases sales of Italian industries, very advanced in the biodegradable plastics sector, a truly innovative invention made in Italy. Furthermore, these regulations have three effects, all negative for consumers. The first effect: new earnings, with wide margins, for the supermarket lobby. In Europe, for example, approximately 100 billion shopping bags are sold each year, and Italy is among the EU countries with the most compulsive bag purchases. So, in times of tight spending due to the uncertainty of household economic situations, supermarkets received their government gift. Second effect: customers, forced to buy a disposable product for each purchase of fruit and vegetables, they will soon understand that they will suffer the damage and the mockeryThe damage is that the shopping bags are not free, and at the end of the year, according to some consumer associations, this will translate into several hundred extra euros; the insult is that they will not be able to show up at the supermarket with the bag they brought from home, starting with the famous and simple "grandma's bag". The one that costs nothing, can be reused every time you go shopping, and therefore without waste and collateral pollution.

FRUIT AND VEGETABLE BAG TAX

Presenting as green, environmentalist legislation a series of rules that are blatantly harmful to new lifestyles that instead tend towards the tout court reduction of shoppers, is really a masterpiece of hypocrisy and low-grade political cunningThis is in complete contrast to Northern European countries where environmental policies are not rigged, and it is no coincidence that laws favor the use of Multi-Bags in supermarkets, i.e. bags made of recyclable material, which everyone brings from home and is not disposable.

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FRUIT AND VEGETABLE BAGS FOR A FEE

Third effect: waste and thepollution increaseAnd I'll explain the perverse mechanism. As consumers gradually understand the harm and mockery of biodegradable bags added to their grocery bill, they'll simply avoid them. How? In the simplest way in the world: by buying pre-packaged fruit and vegetables, in those polystyrene trays or plastic bags that contribute so much to the poisoning of our seas. Meanwhile, there will be an explosive sale of disposable biodegradable bags, unmotivated by real purchasing needs. And where will the green shopping bags we all pay for at the supermarket with our grocery bill end up? Rather than in composting plants, where they should then be recovered and reused, they'll end up in household garbage bins. Further polluting our cities and the environment.

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