In an attempt to reduce plastic bag waste in Puget Sound, the Seattle City Council has passed an ordinance imposing a 20 cent fee on disposable shopping bags. The fee is optional – you only pay if you decide to use a disposable plastic bag instead of bringing your own reusable shopping bag to the market.
The American Chemical Council, representing plastic manufacturers, has spent almost $200,000 in a signature gathering campaign to force the tax measure onto the August 18 citywide primary ballot.
The Seattle Green Bag Campaign is fighting to get the ordinance passed on the ballot and is looking for donations and publicity to get their message out. I encourage you to spread the word and donate if you can. If you buy your reusable shopping bags at Reusablebags.com between now and August 18, they will donate 1% of their proceeds to the cause.
I think Seattle has the right approach
I’ve done a bit of my own research and agree with the Seattle City Council that taxing bags is the way to go if they want to reduce disposable bag use. That city’s move is just a small part of a national and global trend to reduce plastic bag use and waste.
- Palo Alto, California has banned plastic bags, and will be considering a tax similar to Seattle’s later this year. San Jose already has a tax ruling up for city council ruling this summer.
- San Francisco passed a measure in 2007 banning the use of disposable, non-recyclable plastic bags in chains grossing over $2 million yearly. But that move may have been too limited, and appears to have had little overall impact on the problem of plastic bag pollution in San Francisco.
- Ireland passed a 22 Euro cents tax on plastic bags in 2002, and since then use of plastic bags in that country has dropped 90%. (The American Chemical Council disputes this widely touted statistic.)
- China imposed an outright ban on free disposable plastic bags in 2008. That move has saved almost 2 million tons of oil and cut use by 40 million bags in the first year, but has been blamed for the closure of the state’s largest plastics manufacturer just about a month into the ban, a time frame that makes me wonder if there was really a cause and effect.
- Ikea started charging for plastic bags in US stores in 2007, a move that led to a 92% reduction in use. (I myself gave in and bought several large Ikea plastic totes last time I shopped at Ikea, and find them to be a wonderful bag for many, many uses.)
- New York City had initially taken a different tactic, requiring large retailers to collect and recycle the plastic bags they give out to shoppers. The Bloomberg administration proposed a tax on plastic bags in January 2009, but has since backed down on the issue.
Speaking as a New Yorker, I can say I had have never recycled plastic bags at the market, and would support a tax on the bags here. When I shop at Costco, a store that does not supply bags, we use old boxes to carry our goods home. At Ikea, I but their reusable tote. But when I hit Gristedes or Food Emporium or even the Farmers Markets, I take the plastic bags they give me without thinking twice. I don’t think consumer behavior in this area will change voluntarily unless it is made either too costly or too inconvenient to do otherwise.
The American Chemical Council is aggressively fighting Seattle’s and other local measures aimed at reducing plastic bag use. In Seattle, they used out of state paid workers to gather signatures against the measure. In smaller municipalities, their tactic is to threaten lawsuits that cities cannot afford to defend.
It’s another case of the big corporation using their financial and political weight to bully local governments. But with the advent of the Internet, individuals now have the resources to counter the corporate giants.
So spread the word. And start using reusable shopping bags whenever you can.
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If you want to cut back on your plastic bag use, you’ll need another bag. Here are some resources –
- Reusablebags.com
- Ecobags
- Minimaxi shopper
- Use it Again Sam
- Baggubag
- Envirosax
- Flip and Tumble
- Kim Valee reviews the reusables
I've been using re-usable bags for pretty much everything for almost a year now. I just try to keep one or two in the car all the time (because the subway is so far… right across from the Ikea… in some other state).
Before that, I saved plastic bags for garbage bags.
But now, I'm pretty much at an end of those. So, do I need to buy special garbage bags? Are they different than the old plastic bags? Are there decomposable ones I should look for?
Bardiac –
I think there are dispoable plastic bags you can buy.
What did we do before plastic bags I wonder?
http://seattlebagtax.org/
The above is an informative site that provides Seattle bag tax information to the public in one place. It was designed to serve as a resource hub that enables individuals to develop a well-informed judgment on a plastic bag tax or ban.
Please visit and send the link to others interested in this issue. We’d also like to hear your thoughts which can be emailed to info@seattlebagtax.org and hope you take a few minutes to complete the survey located at the bottom of the navigation menu.
***If you are concerned about plastic bags, here are some things you can do to limit your personal consumption of them ***
REDUCE: Plastic bags have sturdy handles and can be made strong enough to hold up to 25 to 44 lbs. of goods. Plastic bags are also waterproof (helpful in Washington weather). The plastics industry has successfully reduced the amount of waste generated from packaging consumer products and plastic milk jugs weigh 30% less than what they did 20 years ago.
REUSE: More than 80% of consumers reported that they save and reuse plastic bags. Common uses for resuing plastic bags include pet pickup, storage, trash bin liners, transport, lunch bags, protecting valuables from water, diaper disposal, moving, yard waste, holding recyclables, and donation to charities, schools, hospitals, food banks.
RECYCLE: Plastic recycling is beneficial because it decreases the amount of used plastics that end up in landfills and allows for fewer natural resourced being used to produce new plastic. Currently, the recovery of plastic recycling has been small (due to their light weight) but growing; 1.4 million tons or 3.9% of the plastics produced in 2003. In 2005, 1.65 million tons, or 5.7% of the 28.9 million tons of plastic generated was recovered. Recycling plastic bags has been available at most supermarkets since 1992 and there is a growing market for recycled plastic that did not exist a decade ago as recyclers make 15-20 cents per pound of collected bags.
great post! i started buying reuseable bags a while back — we have a collection of canvas ones that are good for all kinds of toting needs, but my favorites are a roomy ripstop nylon that [a] can easily ride on my shoulder, and [b] can easily be stuffed into my purse for errands.
we still wind up with some plastic bags, and need to have a few around for pet cleanup and packing [shoes, dirty laundry, wet things]. any extras can now go in our home recycling bin — which now will take all kinds of plastics as well as the usual cans, bottles, paper and cardboard.
my market gives me 3 cents off per bag i bring. that doesn't seem to be much of an incentive; a tax or charge for bags would probably work better.
FYI to reusable bag owners–check the seams of your bags every time. I bought one at Trader Joe's that wasn't sewn completely to begin with, and one from my local grocery had a failed seam after a couple of uses.
In England many of us now use our own cotton or recyclable bags. May of our chain stores do not have them on display and you have to ask for them if you need them. One of the most amazing things is the loss of the plastic bag tree. Every Autumn in England as the winds increased all these plastic bags used to end up in trees,,,,, with 60% of us no longer using plastic bags this sight has almost gone. Next, we need to tackle the huge waste in packaging !!!!!!
I think eliminating plastic grocery bags (whenever possible) will not only be good for the environment but also has the potential to reduce the enormous amount of food that we waste and possibly even reduce the amount of processed food that we consume. In the South we have to drive to the closest uber-supermarket and usually end up filling the trunk with a ridiculous amount of food (lots of it processed) and more plastic bags than we can possibly reuse. Should I get struck by a bolt of lightening and suddenly become a responsible consumer, I can imagine bringing only a few bags to the store and buying only what is needed for the next couple of meals. True, this means more schlepping to the store but it also means less waste (I think I end up throwing away at least 1/3 of what I buy — terrible, I know) and potential health benefits to boot! Now, my little village in the South (Chapel Hill, NC) is pretty hip these days and lots of people are already doing this. But only after reading your post did it occur to me what a reasonable, elegant, logical solution this is. Thanks, Peggy! Why didn't I think of that?
Hi! I'm new to your blog. I was obsessively scouring the web for conception advice (I'm 31 and just started trying for a baby) and I loved your incredibly refreshing and down to earth and non-panic-inspiring post on the topic. And now I find this–I have been saying for years that stores should charge for disposable bags, so I'm glad the movement is gaining some traction. However, I thought you might be interested in one of the most obnoxious articles on the topic ever, from MacLean's (Canada's newsweekly)–basically, the article quotes some flack from the plastic bag industry protesting Toronto's bag charge on the grounds that bags are only a small part of the ocean's trash, and therefore we shouldn't expend our efforts there but fight other plastics instead. The article then quotes another source who suggests that reusable bags are dangerous because they harbor bacteria. SERIOUSLY. And the article contained nothing to counter that argument. http://www2.macleans.ca/2009/07/02/battle-of-the-bag/
The American Chemistry Council's own study indicates that reusable cloth bags are environmentally preferable to plastic bags. See Seattle Green Bag Campaign.