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A little luck of the Irish. Also found on the Calgary Herald site.Ireland is known for its grubbiness; it's a drunken, dirty profanity-stricken country. That's all begun to change in 2004. In 2004 the Irish government flat-out banned smoking in all pubs and outlawed drinking in the street. The government has also announced plans for a levy of 10% on every one of the 80 million or so packets of chewing gum sold annually in Ireland. (Apparently they had a lot of gum on the sidewalks.) Not a bad idea. At first when I read this in the most recent issue of The Economist I laughed and thought- "Ha- try enforcing that". But now that I've had a few days to think about it, it's starting to sound like a good idea. In Ireland, this government tax would create about $5 million which would be used to help fund some poor smuck to go and scrape all that chewing gum from the sidewalks and streets. Although I really wouldn't want that job, I applaud the government for taking a stance on chewing gum. Who would have thought? There is nothing more annoying than seeing some guy throw his cigarette butt out the window and then watching it dance towards my car, or that big tinder dry field of grass. On occasion, I have been known to flip the bird or swerve in my lane to miss it. If taxes were significantly higher than they are now on cigarettes, smokers might be more enticed to keep and frame the smoked butts. Meanwhile we'd have a few more dollars for our forest fire fighters and street sweepers. Back to Ireland. They've also got a tax on plastic shopping bags that has already proven to be quite the success with a huge recycle rate. The next step in the plan is to initiate a tax on fast food wrappers and ATM receipts. Could you imagine a street in Calgary without seeing a McDonalds or Tim Horton's wrapper? Maybe we westerners can take a few lessons from the Irish and put them to our own use. Posted by Bella at 7:26 PM# 0 Comments:
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