Consumers have forked out more than R100-million to the government from the compulsory plastic bag tax - imposed three years ago to fund a national recycling programme - but to date not a single bag has been recycled from this lucrative fund.
The bulk of the money has gone straight into government coffers.
The government's 3c tax on every plastic carrier bag manufactured or imported into the country is built into the price - from 15c to 21c - that shoppers pay for a bag at the till. The tax was imposed on the manufacturing industry with the intention that the money collected would be used to set up a national recycling programme, which would both clean up the environment and create thousands of jobs.
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While the price of plastic bags has meant consumers have not tossed them away as readily as they did in the past, resulting in a noticeable reduction of plastic bag litter, none of the money has been used to recycle plastic bags, nor have any recycling jobs been created.
'That is not a lot in their lives' And although consumers have been paying for carrier bags since May 2003, the South African Revenue Service started collecting the 3c tax only in mid-2004. At the end of the 2004/05 financial year, Sars had collected R41 214 000 from the plastic bag tax and in 2005/06 it collected R61 385 000. Sars collected no plastic bag tax for the 2003/04 financial year. It is not clear where the money from the tax went to in the initial year.
Although former environment minister Valli Moosa introduced the plastic bag tax with the purpose of cleaning up the environment, the Treasury does not allow taxes to be "ring-fenced" - kept in a separate kitty to be used for one purpose. The tax has therefore gone into government coffers, and the department of environment affairs and tourism has to apply to the Treasury to get any of that money back for recycling.
'I reckon they're creaming it'
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