The decision to charge supermarket customers for plastic bags has gained a very high score on my William Shute meter of suspect and dodgy actions. This meter was devised by an agricultural colleague of mine and is widely used to detect cover ups and dissembling and to expose corporate mumbling. It is perhaps better known by its more colloquial moniker of the Bill Shute test.

Foodstuffs fails this test.

The charge will be five cents a bag. Does this represent the cost of producing and supplying the bag? No it doesn’t. How do we know that? Because the company says that the change will produce a surplus.

How much of a surplus? We don’t know, but they are acknowledging immediately that they are overcharging, and that’s bad. What are we paying more than we need to?

A tax imposed on so called externalities like waste, pollution or other side effects of an activity is normally related closely to the cost of remedying the effect in question. There is no evidence that the change of five cents a bag has been determined on this basis, and it is therefore arbitrary and unfair.

The company has talked blandly about the money going to some environmental cause. Which one? Don’t know. Who will decide? The company will.(Of course, how silly to expect anything else!)

Do the people who are paying the charge get a say?  No we don’t. That’s contrary to the usual principle that those who pay has some say in how their taxes are used. It’s called democracy, but Foodstuffs doesn’t know about that.

What will happen when the charge is introduced?  Well the most important effect has already occurred. The company looks good, or thinks it does – and for the arrogant, the crass and the cynical, being seen to be good is better than actually being good.

Foodstuffs betrays its true intent by picking on the simplest and easiest thing it could do with the least harm and inconvenience to itself. That is; they tell us it’s our fault there is a problem with plastic bags, and they charge us in order to punish us.

Nice one Foodstuffs. If you really did care about clogged land fills and the like you’d do something about the cellophane wrappers around packaged goods, and the expensive multicoloured packaging on nearly every item that’s on your shelves, plus the tin and plastic containers that are everywhere.

Collectively they cause much more pollution that the plastic bags which shoppers find convenient to use and typically recycle as a substitute for rubbish bin liners.

The plastic bags are not a big problem. And even if they are, transferring the responsibility to the customers, inducing guilt in them for using the bags you have happily supplied, and then charging them as a form of penance is utterly shameful behaviour on your part.

So I say roll back your decision Foodstuffs. Keep supplying plastic bags free to customers and address the real environmental issues of your business. Your pollution is not my fault, and please don’t try to make it so.

Scoopit

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John Bishop is standing for the Wellington City Council in the Lambton Ward as a pro growth, business friendly, keen on green, independent candidate. He works in communications and as a business advisor. His campaign site is at www.johnbishopforcouncil.co.nz