“Plastic bag fee ‘not a tax” – The Nassau Guardian
Excerpt from this article; “An official in the Ministry of Environment and Housing yesterday dismissed accusations that the new plastic bag fee is a tax, while stressing that the fee is intended to make consumers ‘angry’ as they would be deterred from using single-use plastics.
Within the first week of the government implementation of a ban on single-use plastics, some consumers expressed support for the ban while others took issue with the plastic bag fee in particular calling it a ‘tax’ and threatening to boycott businesses that follow the new law.
‘The 25 cents to a dollar is not a tax’, said Dr. Rhianna Neely-Murphy, senior environmental officer.

‘The 25 cents was put in place during this transition period as a deterrent to encourage people to change their behavior and bring their reusable bags. We understand that plastic bags have become a part of our society, so the change would’ve a bit difficult. So we gave the customers, the Bahamians six months during this transition period to get used to living without plastic, with less plastic.
The Environmental Protection (Control of Plastic Pollution) Act 2019 outlines that businesses have until June 2010 to possess prohibited items such as plastic bags on the condition that the items are sold to customers at a fee no less than 25 cents and no more than $1, excluding value-added tax.”
The very fact that a penalty has to be put in place to ‘encourage’ better behavior is an issue within itself and is very alarming to me as it is a very serious indictment on the mindset of us as a people.
I find the discourse on social media extremely interesting and telling; we as a people are very resistant to change, even if it is to our very benefit and especially if it may inconvenience us for a while and force us to do something which seems to be more difficult at the onset but is very easily adjusted to.
There were many ‘reason’ given as to why we should not adhere to the new ‘tax’ imposed on us by the government and by the way it is not a tax, one being that it is a ‘tax’ the people did not have sufficient time to prepare for, although it was announced that the government had planned to move in this direction from May of 2019. Then you have those that claims it only benefits the ‘white’ business owners, as if only ‘whites’ own businesses. There are even some that say that they will not be forced into this and therefore they will boycott Bahamian businesses and shop with “the Chinese” but don’t they have also have to comply with the new law?

I have a simple solution to all of these complaints, why don’t we just buy the reusable bags and become more disciplined in our use of them as a people, but it would appear that this is the problem.
“The 25 cents was put in place during this transition period as a deterrent to encourage people to change their behavior.”
We as a people do not want to conform or become more disciplined and responsible as it is too much of a headache and hassle. So now we threaten the government and everyone else that offends our sense of complacency over 25 cents.
Is this really what we have become?

END