How do you change an entire culture?

Charge people 33 cents for doing the wrong thing:

In 2002, Ireland passed a tax on plastic bags; customers who want them must now pay 33 cents per bag at the register. There was an advertising awareness campaign. And then something happened that was bigger than the sum of these parts.

Within weeks, plastic bag use dropped 94 percent. Within a year, nearly everyone had bought reusable cloth bags, keeping them in offices and in the backs of cars. Plastic bags were not outlawed, but carrying them became socially unacceptable — on a par with wearing a fur coat or not cleaning up after one’s dog. ...

Gerry McCartney, 50, a data processor, has also switched to cloth. “The tax is not so much, but it completely changed a very bad habit,” he said. “Now you never see plastic.”

I admit that I find this absurdly hopeful—not just that people's behavior changed, but that their attitudes did as well.  It's an example of how close to the surface the potential for meaningful change can be without us realizing it.  You see signs of these kinds of changes on a host of issues (like this, for example), and it's one of the things that makes me optimistic.

On this particular topic: for a while now I've made it a habit to take my own plastic bags with me to stores, since they compress down to nothing in your pocket and keep you from collecting yet more of their petroleum-based, landfill-choking brethren (of course it's easy doing that at small corner stores in a city like San Francisco; I admit I might lose my nerve under the withering glare of veteran shoppers at a suburban Target).  Just another simple way in which you, personally, can save the entire planet.

Comments

[petey]

it's true: i just came back from the old country and people really do this. two points: 1) however prosperous and materially indulgent ireland is now, it's only one generation from the hardscrabble life of my parents where nothing, but nothing, was wasted. you're tapping into a culture that still, just below the surface (as john says), frowns on waste. i don't know that this is transferable to the states. 2) however, it can lead to frustrations. a frequent comment around the fire of an evening (yes, my family still spends evenings around the fire) was how stringent the environmental laws have become, and how difficult it is to get a building permit. one of my cousins had to apply four times, which may be blamed on the contractors who are supposed to conform their buildings to the laws, but it didn't make his life any easier.

[Duncan]

Well, I collect my plastic bags and take them periodically to the used bookstore, where the owner reuses them. This is probably totally tacky, but I live alone and there's no one to fuss at me for doing it; besides, it takes a fairy to make something tacky -- but I collect the bags over the back of a kitchen chair, putting each one over the previous one. When the layering is thick enough, I take it to the bookstore.

[John Caruso]

petey: Thanks for the anecdotes. We'll see if it's transferable to the States on a large scale, but like I say, I do see lots of hopeful signs in that direction. Here's an excerpt from another article I happened across:

Remember, it was less than a year ago that bottled water was the sophisticated choice in restaurants and at home. Now if you drink the stuff you're an environmental cretin, personally responsible for some of the 1.5 million barrels of oil used each year to make the plastic containers. Upon hearing that news, a guilt-stricken colleague rushed out to buy a filter for his faucet and is considering buying a gadget to make sparkling water at home. His friends who haven't made the change? "Bottle-buying, Earth-polluting pigs."

I'm not sure if the fall from grace of plastic bottles has been quite as precipitous as she suggests (among the general populace), but still, there's an environmental consciousness creeping into all areas of people's lives these days, and that can only be a good thing.

[petey]

"We'll see if it's transferable to the States on a large scale, but like I say, I do see lots of hopeful signs in that direction."

oh yes, to be clear, i'd agree. two points (i'm really into making two points):
1: a clear, simple, strongly enforced govt policy can work. in addition to ireland's bag tax, both the dogwaste law of about 30 years ago and bloomberg's ban on smoking in bars of about 5 years ago have worked quite well (i live in nyc). crazy, you'd think, telling people they had to bend over to pick up actual shit, and then telling them they couldn't smoke while they drank. but it's worked. moral: the thing you're trying to push has to be patently a good thing.
2: the sensibility lying close to the surface will be different in diferent localities. ireland i opined about above; in the states i'm afraid people may be coming around because in the last 3 years or so the corporations have signed on to the green program. and if corporations are into it, then it must be acceptable, reasonable behavior, not some hippie googooism. but maybe i'm just being cynical.

[ms_xeno]

Paper bags are the coveted choice around here because they can be recycled for, uh, putting out one's paper recycling.

Plastic is still coveted in bad weather though, because there's bus travel and the obligation to put the shopping bags on the wet ground so another tired pedestrian can sit down in the bus shelter.

[John Caruso]

I think the main reason corporations are going greener is that they see that's what people want. Though I could imagine there's a reverse feedback effect on people who'd rather follow a corporation's lead than an activist's. There's a danger there of selling people the illusion of green without much substance, but still, this is one trend I don't mind seeing corporations try to co-opt.

ms_xeno: I luv luv luv plastic bags, myself. I use them all the time for outings (e.g. for a hike I'll take a backpack but keep the delectables safe and separate with plastic bags), until they start getting too shredded to hold much of anything. I'll be sad to see them go.