&gt;  Does the nickel per bag have an appreciable impact on the environment? It&#x27;s being floated as an anti-littering thing, so keep in mind the goalposts have already moved once.<p>In my county, the nickle is a reminder. The program costs the stores a penny to run, and it costs like two or three pennies&#x2F;bag to run the regulations (I guess the agents who go around store-to-store to make sure that everyone is in compliance). So the county is only getting like a penny&#x2F;bag in profit out of this. With 10-million bags used per year, that&#x27;s like $100,000 in taxes, which is barely a rounding error on the budget.<p>The primary purpose is to remind people of the effects of pollution, not actually to create revenue. But its an effective means at curbing plastic-bag pollution at the source (people using fewer bags)