LOW-IMPACT LIVING: One of the few taxes that I look forward to paying is the plastic-bag levy. Or, rather, I prefer to avoid it by bringing my own carrier when I'm shopping, but, if I forget, I happily fork out my 15 cent. Over the past four and a half years all our little 15-cent charges have added up to more than €60 million - and they'll add up to even more from next month, when the charge goes up to 22c.
The money goes into an "environment fund" that finances waste-management, recycling and environmental projects - among them initiatives such as the Race Against Waste campaign and the Green Schools programme.
Handing over your 15 cent and knowing that it's going into such a fund carries a grand feel-good factor. At least it does for me - except when the checkout operator can't be bothered to charge me for a bag, and I have to self-righteously beg to pay, or the packing-station sensor at the new automated self-service tills refuses to recognise the bag because it weighs so little, heckling electronically: "Please place the item in the bagging area . . . Please place the item in the bagging area."
It's no wonder that some rushed people skip scanning the bags. (Yes, the tax is one that you are encouraged to avoid: it was introduced primarily to decrease the number of bags littering our country, especially the "witches' knickers" that get caught in fences and trees, rather than to raise money. But such tax avoidance requires bringing your own bag rather than filching those that are supplied.) Revenue has more than doubled since the levy was introduced, meaning that we have been getting complacent (I know I have). The 15-cent penalty has been so painless that we have forgotten to bring carriers - which is why Friends of the Earth and Irish Business Against Litter wanted the tariff raised to a more stinging 30 cent.
Nonetheless, we're still acquiring far fewer supermarket bags at the till, which is good. But we're purchasing more bags than ever for our rubbish, in the form of nappy bags and bin liners. These end up in landfill and, depending on who you're listening to, take anything from 100 to 1,000 years to break down.
Of course we could always change to biodegradable bags, such as those made by Irish company Earth 2 Earth (www.earth2earth.com). In the fullness of time these degrade into carbon dioxide and water. This operation takes 12 weeks in a composting system and two to five years in landfill. Those that end up as witches' knickers take 18 months to vanish.