Toronto was once now as a progressively green city, but under new mayor Rob Ford that appears to be changing. For the worse. Ford’s most recent move is to reconsider the five cent fee on plastic bags, which is aimed at curbing wastage and is being adopted by cities across the globe. Italy recently decided to ban plastic bags all together.
“All of a sudden the five cents is really becoming a sticking point with people and it wasn’t really before, so I want to get rid of it,” Ford told the National Post. “I’m going to change how it’s being implemented right now, put it that way. How we’re going to do it, I’m not quite sure, but we’re definitely going to review it. Because spending five cents and just putting it in the pocket of businesses doesn’t make any sense to me.”
But this seems to ignore the main point of the fee, which is to reduce waste, discouraging shoppers from using bags in the first place. Understandably, not everyone agrees with Ford. “We think anything that reduces plastic use is a good thing,” Franz Hartmann, executive director of the Toronto Environmental Alliance, said.
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