What Are The Plastci Bag Taxe Money Going To Illinois

Gov. J.B. Pritzker wants to make a host of spic-and-span taxes to help equilibrium Illinois' budget — on everything from e-cigarettes to medical insurance companies.

NPR Illinois reporters wealthy person been break down those revenue-generating ideas. Today we'Ra looking at a prospective tax on shopping bags.

(See previous stories on taxing managed caution organizations, play, vaping, and tobacco plant, and the retailer's discount.)

Environmentalists have stretch been urging shoppers to ditch paper and plastic in favor reusable bags.

Pritzker wants to feed Illinoisans a nudge. His call for a old bag tax is a small piece of his plan to balance the state budget next year. His team estimates a bulge tax could generate between $19 and $23 million yearly, contingent on whether the state tax is imposed in Windy City (the city already has its own bag tax).

But for biological science activists, a taxation on bags is non about the money.

"Plastic udder pollution is incredibly concerning," says Jen Walling. She's the executive theatre director of the Illinois Environmental Council, which is au fond a supergroup — a coalition of outfits like the Scomberomorus sierra Club and The Nature Conservancy.

Walling says bags do all kinds of damage.

"You put back a plastic bag in the recycling and that ends raised tying aweigh the machinery and it makes recycling more expensive. Plastic bags clog sewer drains and they cause expenses for communities. They clog agricultural equipment," Walling says.

And the trouble goes beyond litter and mechanical problems, she says. Bags put on't decay; alternatively, they break up into teeny little fragments that find their direction into animals — and eventually, into us.

'We bed there are concerns from these microplastics that are getting into our waterways and acquiring into our wildlife.'

"We wear't symmetrical know completely of the health impacts that power be coming to populate from microplastics, but we love on that point are concerns from these microplastics that are getting into our waterways and getting into our wildlife," she says.

Of course of instruction, Pritzker is also related about the positive wellness personal effects on the budget that could fall from onerous a fewer coins per bag. Which brings us to the two main questions: how much to charge and what to do with the money.

In his budget proposal, Pritzker called for a nickel tax, per bag, with all 5 cents going into the state's main checking account. It's called the General Revenue Fund. From thither it could be spent on whatever.

Environmentalists say the task should be double — 10 cents a bag — with the money earmarked for environmental causes. Here's Walling again:

"We just worry if it's all in the General Revenue Store, we're releas to stop trying to disincentivize people from using the bags. And that's the propose of this fee. This is not a fee to mother revenue for the res publica; it's a fee to protect the environment."

Walling also says that, up to a certain signal, high taxes are more effective at reduction bulge employment. A consider found Chicago's 7-cent tax — accomplished two age ago — LED to double-digit drops in the percentage of mass taking single-use bags.

Some retailers have tried incentivizing customers to land reusable bags — Target has given shoppers 5 cents off per bag for nearly a ten. A pilot version of that program reportedly led to a 58 percent growth the use of reusable bags.

produce department — Thin fictile bags in use for create are typically exempt from bag taxes.

In that respect are other issues to cost definite, like which bags to tax. Typically shopping bags are taxed, but not the thin plastic bags used to corral produce or keep raw meat separate from other groceries. Carry-out sacks from restaurants are usually immune, too.

There are other issues to Be decided, suchlike whether to let stores keep off a portion of the tax for themselves.

That's what happens with the city of Chicago's traveling bag tax — a nickel goes to City of London, the fund gets to keep deuce cents.

Rob Karr, of the Illinois Retail Merchants Association, says that separate is essential.

"There is a clear recognition that they have significant additional costs for carrying additional items comparable paper bags surgery utile bags," he says.

Pritzker's plan does not account for sharing the fee with stores, though his administration says it's glad to negotiate on the inside information.

The retail merchants also want a state handbag tax to pre-empt some topical anesthetic ordinances — at to the lowest degree outside Stops. (Oak Parkland is the only unusual Illinois city with a bag tax.)

Karr says with sol many companies operating in multiple jurisdictions, a hodgepodge of local rules would be a logistical and account nightmare.

"There is — at least we've got — as I indicated — we've gotten our minds more or less the fact that there is a proper way to proceed on this," Karr says. "And then depending on how the state wants to carry on, we could hang back something."

Merely environmentalists fight back a determine on local rules. They enounce environmental policy often works best when IT comes from the community up.

There are also legislators World Health Organization will oppose a bulge tax on rationale, like Republican state Rep. Allen Skillicorn, of East Dundee.

'Taxes and the state aren't tortuous in creating good behavior; people do it themselves.'

"I'm real supportive of people using reusable bags or whatever. But the approximation of sticking people with a five-cent punishment for using a suitcase is ridiculous," Skillicorn says. "Taxes and the state aren't interested in creating upstanding behavior; people do it themselves."

That said, Skillicorn and his fellow Republicans are in the minority in the House and Senate. If Democrats decide to work together, they have more than enough legislators to pass a traveling bag tax.

That means Illinoisans could presently be disagreeable to answer a various head about useful bags: How to remember them when you go shopping.

"I try. I experience enough of them laying around my house. I should have none excuse not to utilize them," says state Rep. Ann Hank Williams. She's a Populist from Chicago, and is sponsoring the environmentalists' bag tax.

Williams is too moderate of the Green Caucus, and calls herself environmentally disposed. But she says even off her behaviour has been changed by Boodle's 7-centime revenue enhancement: "When I don't bring them — I blank out — I try and shove atomic number 3 very much like I hind end into my pocketbook, and then carry whatever other out loosely."

And if Williams, the environmentalists and Pritzker have their way, purses and pockets bulging with food could soon be the novel normal in IL.