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Friday, July 18, 2003


:: Ireland to introduce a chewing gum tax ::
Ireland continues to blaze a trail with it's polluter pays tax policy being extended from plastic bags to include chewing gum, polystyrene fast food containers + cash machine receipts...

Earth-Info.Net notes that Wrigley's chewing gum say this tax unfairly penalises people who don't make a habit a discarding gum irresponsibly, which is true, but also notes that council's are having to spend a disproportionate amount of their funds (£50,000 in Brighton alone) dealing with a problem caused by a specific group of consumers.

Interestingly, plastic bag use has dropped by 90% in Ireland and environmentally responsible alternatives such as biodegradable, tapioca + jute bags are increasingly being offered to shoppers.

To give you an idea of the scale of the problem... British consumers get through 3,000,000,000 packets of chewing gum + 20,000,000,000 plastic bags each year.

Earth-Info.Net therefore hopes that similar taxes will be included in the UK's forthcoming anti-litter bill.


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