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Plastic bags supplied by shops to be 'minted' with secure watermarks etc and be legal tender.
They would cost (& 'promise to pay the bearer') a suitable abount e.g one pound that would discourage them being discarded.
The bags would be redeemable back in shops for goods & exchangeable for cash
in banks etc.
The kitchen drawer would become a savings bank for those who don't have the 'green' habit of taking their own bags / baskets shopping.
Kids & street people would collect up & redeem any bags that found their way out into the environment.
Plastic Bag Tax
http://www.iht.com/.../31/europe/bags.php
the clever Irish teach the slow learners yet again [xenzag, Mar 15 2008]
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Rather than make them currency, you could require a deposit as is done with drink cans and bottles in some localities. |
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"promise to pay the bearer" takes on a whole new meaning. would the shops give out old ones though? don't fancy that much. |
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This is like Hitchikers huide to the Galaxy, where all the idiots from a whole planet are conned into thinking that their homeworld is dying, by the non-idiots who there dwell. |
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When the 'ark' containing the idiots reaches their new planetary home, they realise they have no currency, and declare that the currency should be fallen leaves. |
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I think a bun, but only because it is wholly wrong. Wholly halfbaked. |
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SPELLING BEE: Hyperinflation.
CONTESTANT: Context please. |
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Well alright mister wiseguy, you tell us what colour it should be. |
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//and declare that the currency should be fallen leaves//
They didn't wait for them to fall, as I recall. Whole forests were stripped. Couldn't let all that currency just hang there from branches, now could they? With bags as money, people would keep their bags in their wallets and their purchases in their hands. (In the transitional period, I'm envisioning street urchins grabbing an old lady's groceries, dumping them out and running away with the bags. +) |
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It's a nice thought, but we have a five cent refund on aluminum cans and plastic bottles and people still litter them all over the place. []
Homeless people pick them up and dig through trash barrels to redeem them. |
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[xandram] yep, but to take the value up from cents to eg 1$ would raise the incentive to return it, as would making it legal tender everywhere, rather just in a particular shop. |
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In order to work, it needs to be valued at more than something most people wouldn't stoop to pick up. |
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Good idea. Just make them expensive to buy say 50c and support that price at the production level by taxing disposable containers. The redemption market would quickly fall away as people quickly moved to other modes of packaging. Establishing a set value for somthing that loses all value if torn would keep them out of the gutter but does not allow re-use. If redemption values are higher than market value then you invite the minting of fakes. |
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[WcW] - Wanton / arbitrary taxation tends to lead to resentment & non-compliance that would screw up the plan - (albeit with interesting spin-off fiddles) |
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This scheme would valorise something seemingly antithetical to money that yet is of similar (zero-ish) intinsic value - might be fun/interesting - |
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(And makes me think about the market going rate of carrier bags for putting over your boots at that last muddy Glastonbury ) |
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Taxation of motor fuel goes off without much protest. I suspect, with an adequate public stigma attached, that bags could be taxed as highly as tobacco is without broad resentment. Call it a modern sin tax. |
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This is the honest truth. I once participated in setting up a LETS scheme where the unit was known as the Leaf because of H2G2. |
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