Saving the Environment...

Over the past few years many of my friends have become increasingly aware of the human impact on the environment.  Most of them believe that good citizens should recycle and play an active role in reducing their carbon footprint.  It wasn't until last year that one of my good friends, Samantha, showed me another way that I could help preserve the environment.  She told me that she had been making an active effort to convince her mom to buy cloth bags to carry their groceries instead of regular plastic bags.  I thought it was a really cool idea because a majority of plastic bags actually take some time to decompose in landfills.  I haven't gotten my mom to switch over yet, but I haven't really mentioned it to her either.  

If we lived in New York City, I wouldn't have to do much convincing.  Mayor Mike Bloomberg is planning to make shoppers pay a six cent tax on every grocery bag that they use. This will create an initiative for shoppers to use less bags switch over to cloth/reusable bags and therefore help make New York City more green.  In addition to helping out the environment, the tax is estimated to bring in almost sixteen million dollars in revenue.  However, Mayor Bloomberg should beware that other taxes similar to the one he has just proposed were unsuccessful in creating revenue.  The reason: Consumers switched over to cloth bags in less than a few months. 

No matter what something good is probably going to come out of the tax.