No doubt that carrier bags are really bad for the environment. In a bid to cut back on their “excessive” use, from this month, a charge of 5p per single-use carrier bag is introduced in Wales, with England and Scotland expected to begin public consultations soon. Applause should be given to the government when environmental issues are moving up the political agenda, but some green campaigners grumble over a 5p charge being not good enough. It, however, reminds me of the not-so-successful “plastic bag tax” imposed in Hong Kong since mid-2009.[1] The writer is apprehensive that the new levy may turn out to be a similar game of numbers. When the Government are liaising with the retailers, can we actually learn a lesson from the former colony?
Management guru, Peter Drucker, once wrote “Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work”. His inspiring words highlight the importance of effective implementation of (environmental) policies in an organisation or a country. Experience tells us that a weak policy often goes with weak behaviour. It happens under the circumstance where neither do people have sufficient power to shape the policy nor does the policy has sufficient power to change behaviour. A corollary is a co-existence of conflicting policy and behaviour because people maintain the status quo by developing their counteractive double-standard behaviour which aims to comply with the policy only by letter. Thus, innovation goes into preserving the gap between new policy and usual behaviour. Such scenario can be described as ‘policy directive from above, policy distortions from below’.
For the same purpose, the Hong Kong Government introduced a tax of HK$0.5 per plastic bag distributed in designated retail outlets, including major supermarkets. According to the legal definition, they are carrier bags to which a handle or hole is attached.[2] Retailers are neither willing to change their behaviour of giving plastic bags to boost sales figures nor powerful enough to change the new policy. To abide by the law on paper, they are being innovative in maintaining the policy-behaviour gap with their wisdom to exploit the legal loopholes.
Retailers’ strategies include (1) pre-packaging their drink items in handled plastic; and (2) abusing flat-mouth or sandwich bags (that is beyond the legal definition of a plastic bag) supposed to carry wet goods like fresh meat and vegetables for dry products in order to get around the 50-cent levy.[3] The ‘presented’ behaviour, measurable by the amount of levy collected or the number of ‘handled bags’ sent to landfill sites, would deceptively make the bureaucrats believe the levy enjoys successful implementation on paper.
True, the sharp decline in the number of carrier bags used by each household in the Republic of Ireland and Italy which introduced carrier bag levy are appealing to English policymakers. Yet, let us not be too ‘simple’ when importing the carrier bag charge to England. The lesson from the Far East should make us more vigilant for every possible loophole when we are mapping out a well-intentioned plan for our environment.
[1] Since July 2009, the Environmental Levy Scheme on Plastic Shopping Bags has come into force in Hong Kong. Some 2,800 shops in the territory, including supermarket chains, convenience stores, personal health and beauty stores, have started charging their customers a HK$ 50-cent (approx. £ 4p) plastic bag levy. The fee is applied when citizens buy three kinds of products, food and drink, medicines and personal beauty goods. The latest government figures suggest that during the initial two-quarter period of implementation HK$13.1 million (approx. £1.09 million) has been collected from the levy. The citizens may be using 90% fewer plastic bags and the number of plastic bags to be dumped into the landfill sites will be halved since the new law is enforced, according to government estimates.
[2] In accordance with the Product Eco-Responsibility Ordinance (Cap. 603), the Laws of Hong Kong, a plastic shopping bag is defined as a bag which (a) “is made wholly or partly of plastic” and (b) has “a handle, handle hole, perforated line for tearing out a handle hole, carrying string or strap, or any other carrying device on, or attached to”, it. (Department of Justice, 2009)
[3] As a tactic to counteract the plastic bag levy, in some supermarkets cashier staffs were even instructed to provide flat-mouth bags with the company’s logo without asking the shoppers if they had brought their shopping bags. Then, they put the items into the bag and tied the top of flat-mouth bags to form a handle for the customers.
Email me at winstonkm.mark@googlemail.com
No comments:
Post a Comment