In February, Chicago joined Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle in implementing a tax on disposable carry-out bags. According to a study led by Professor Tatiana A. Homonoff of New York University, the city is already seeing results.

Homonoff’s study was commissioned by the Mayor’s Office in Chicago — and the NYU professor paired with research organization ideas42 and the University of Chicago’s Energy and Environment Lab. It does have one serious, and obvious, caveat: The 7-cent tax was implemented on Feb. 1 and today is April 24. That’s not a lot of time. However, the findings are still striking — perhaps even more so for their immediacy.

Read Full Article