{"id":2446881,"date":"2019-07-28T19:36:01","date_gmt":"2019-07-29T01:36:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/news\/taxing-paper-bags-is-counterproductive\/"},"modified":"2019-07-29T08:30:50","modified_gmt":"2019-07-29T14:30:50","slug":"taxing-paper-bags-is-counterproductive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/taxing-paper-bags-is-counterproductive\/","title":{"rendered":"Taxing paper bags is counterproductive"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Tagging consumers with fees for choosing paper bags amounts to a problem in search of a solution. Now, Carbondale\u2019s environmental board wants to take paper bag fees to a new level by using the money for a consultant to work on plastic waste. On both points, we couldn\u2019t disagree more.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Point one: Paper bags are recyclable, reusable, compostable and made from a renewable resource \u2014 trees. The U.S. grows more trees than it harvests; in fact, there are 20 percent more trees in the U.S. now than existed on the first Earth Day in 1970. Consumers should be encouraged to choose paper over plastic rather than being taxed, which disproportionately impacts low-income citizens.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Point two: Using paper bag fees to solve the plastic waste problem? Wrong again. The paper industry has stepped up to achieve a record high 68.1 percent paper recovery for recycling rate in 2018. Consumers should not be taxed for choosing the responsible alternative to plastic in order to generate money to address plastic waste.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">It\u2019s time to go back to the drawing board.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND Letter Name\">Terry Webber<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND Letter Title\">American Forest &amp; Paper Association<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND Letter Title\">Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/opinion\/letters-to-the-editor\/taxing-paper-bags-is-counterproductive\/?\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tagging consumers with fees for choosing paper bags amounts to a problem in search of a solution. Now, Carbondale\u2019s environmental board wants to take paper bag fees to a new level by using the money for a consultant to work on plastic waste. On both points, we couldn\u2019t disagree more. Point one: Paper bags are [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2446881","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-22 05:19:04","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley&#039;s Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2446881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2446881"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2446881\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2446902,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2446881\/revisions\/2446902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2446881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2446881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2446881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}