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Seattle City Council Approves 20-Cent Shopping Bag Fee

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rsmith6621 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jul-28-08 06:52 PM
Original message
Seattle City Council Approves 20-Cent Shopping Bag Fee
SEATTLE -- In a 6-1 vote, the Seattle City Council has approved a 20-cent per bag charge on disposable paper or plastic shopping bags provided at convenience, drug and grocery stores.

The object of the controversial plan is to encourage the use of reusable shopping bags and cut down on waste.

http://www.komonews.com/news/26003519.html
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Taverner Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jul-28-08 06:56 PM
Response to Original message
1. I have a much better idea
Use carrots, not sticks

Have a state buy back initiative where you get so many cents off your grocery bill based on the plastic bags you bring back. Then re-use them after cleaning.
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MercutioATC Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jul-28-08 06:57 PM
Response to Reply #1
3. Clean plastic grocery bags???
The labor cost alone would be prohibitive.
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Taverner Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jul-28-08 07:06 PM
Response to Reply #3
7. Pop them in a dishwasher, sort them out.
If they are broken, recycle them.

If they are whole reuse them, and offer a subsidy-back discount for choosing them over 'new' bags.
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MercutioATC Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jul-28-08 07:20 PM
Response to Reply #7
9. Yeah, but they're worth like two tenths of a cent each...
...it'd be cheaper to just replace them with new ones.
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Taverner Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jul-28-08 07:46 PM
Response to Reply #9
10. Not with subsidies
Stimulus in areas where we need it
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MercutioATC Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jul-28-08 09:16 PM
Response to Reply #10
11. Taxpayer money? Nope.
I'm all for offering cloth bags at a reasonable price and charging for paper or plastic.

Why would anybody advocate spending taxpayer money to compensate a store (or whomever) exponentially more than the value of an item to reuse that item?
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sentelle Donating Member (659 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jul-28-08 07:16 PM
Response to Reply #1
8. some did that already
For those (like whole foods) they took five cents off for every bag you used that was your own.

My local markets (on BI, and in poulsbo) do the same.
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jtrockville Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jul-28-08 06:57 PM
Response to Original message
2. What's controversial? The vote was 6-1.
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michreject Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jul-28-08 06:57 PM
Response to Original message
4. Who gets the fee?
The city or the store.
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jtrockville Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jul-29-08 06:45 AM
Response to Reply #4
12. The city - to help with solid waste disposal.
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trof Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jul-28-08 06:58 PM
Response to Original message
5. Paper? That's a renewable resource, right?
Of course there's energy involved in making the paper.
I dunno.
Cloth reusable is best, anyway.
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The empressof all Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jul-28-08 07:02 PM
Response to Original message
6. How is this going to be tracked at the point of sale?
Edited on Mon Jul-28-08 07:03 PM by The empressof all
I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around this. I support the concept and understand the benefit but what controls are in place to require stores to track and turn over the fee collected.

I haven't put any research or frankly a lot of thought into this yet but something is making me feel a little wookie about this.
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paparush Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jul-29-08 07:25 AM
Response to Original message
13. How about a DISCOUNT for using reusable bags?
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insleeforprez Donating Member (321 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jul-29-08 08:30 AM
Response to Reply #13
14. It's pretty simple
Because you want the fee/discount to be proportional to the number of plastic bags that would have been used. There's no way to do that easily if it's a discount (how many bags "would have been used").

This plan makes great sense. Plastic bags have a negative externality, and they're free to the consumer. So, we need the consumer to internalize the cost of the pollution that a given plastic bag creates, and one damn good way of doing this is to have a fee.
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