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Legislation calling for a five-cent tax on plastic and paper bags in Virginia hits the statehouse today, and the inevitable why-tax-when-you-can-recycle question looms. The state gave two grants to fund plastic bag recycling in 2008 to Isle of Wight County, whose efforts with recycling were chronicled by The List earlier, and to the city of Alexandria. So did plastic bag recycling programs reduce the number of plastic bags in the environment? Well it’s all very, very, very hard to say.

1. 2.5 tons of plastic bags were recycled, but number has no context

   Yon Lambert, a director for Alexandria's Environmental and Transportation Services, has figures on the bags recycled from September 2009 through last summer, but since no data was collected before then, it’s hard to know if this represents an improvement.

2. No one knows how many bags were consumed vs. how many were recycled

   “It’s very hard for us to estimate things like that,” says Lambert. No litter surveys were conducted to gauge if the recycling push was impacting plastic bag trash.

3. Other grant-funded efforts

   Lambert says the city partnered with schools, which collected around 4,800 pounds of plastic bags, and distributed more than 2,000 reusable bags “at events like farmer’s markets.” Lambert explains that more data or even anecdotal evidence is hard to come by because the person spear-heading these initiatives has since left her position. No report was available on the city’s grant-funded recycling programs.

4. No data from the Dept. of Environmental Quality

   Steve Coe of the DEQ’s recycling program says it’s hard to say if the $10,000 grant given to Alexandria was effective in reducing the number of plastic bags in the environment. “There’s really been no long-term evaluation” of the direct impact, he says. Coe says northern Virginia “has reportedly, at least short-term, seen reduced bags,” but “they haven’t been able to quantify it yet. … The quantification of it is tough.”

5. Local legislator skeptical of recycling's benefits

   State Del. Adam Ebbin, who represents parts of Alexandria and is introducing the five-cent tax legislation today, says he pushed for a fee over recycling initiatives because he doesn't believe recycling is an effective way to fight bag trash. "The recycling rates of throwaway grocery bags are extremely low, and pollution is a byproduct of recycling as well," he says. He cites concerns over what happens to bags that are "recycled," saying that many of them actually are not recycled but shipped abroad and incinerated cheaply.

6. D.C.’s legislation author didn’t consider pushing recycling

   Tommy Wells, author of D.C.'s bag bill, always pushed for a tax rather than more recycling programs, says his chief of staff, Charles Allen. “There was discussion, but the discussion was that we’ve been trying to push recycling for 40 years in this country and the Anacostia River was still full of trash,” he says. They were unswayed by a push toward recycling from plastic lobbying arm the American Chemistry Council. “It was absolutely a recommendation from the ACC that we should recycle more. We didn’t buy it.” Allen is unimpressed with claims that recycling reduces bag trash. “They all pat each other on the back for making it a requirement that a grocery store must have a recycling container by its front door," he says. "It doesn't do anything."