The Seattle City Council has just voted 6-1 to assess a 20 cent per bag fee on disposable shopping bags. The fee goes into effect January 1, 2009, allowing time for a 3 month educational campaign. A ban on plastic foam food containers and cups (excluding meat trays) also passed 7-0.
Free reusable shopping bags will be distributed to people on fixed incomes and people receiving supplies at food banks and homeless shelters.
Seattle’s Mayor Nickels has been pushing for the ban as a way to reduce landfill waste. A similar ban in Ireland resulted in a 90% decrease in the use of disposable bags, and street trash. Although the plastic bags are recyclable, Seattleites only recycle 13% of them.
Another aspect of Mayor Nickel’s campaign to reduce plastic trash is to ask people to stop buying bottled water. How crazy is it to spend $0.79+ on a pint of bottled water (and future plastic trash) when some of the finest drinking water in the world is available on tap at 1/3 of a cent per gallon?
What’s your city doing to reduce consumption and landfill needs?
when my partner and i go out to eat, we take along a few reusable plastic containers to put our leftovers in. we’re known and recognized by the wait staff at our favorite spots because of this habit, which they seem happily surprised to see. although we’re the only ones we see doing this, i have always been happy to see how many people show up to the coffee shops with their own reusable mugs, cups and even shot glasses.
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p>my main concern with the foam ban is that food vendors will just shift to paper products. that’s all well and good (renewable resource, etc.), until you consider that health and safety requirements make it nearly impossible to use recycled paper in food containers. thus those two nested paper cups that Starbucks gives you to keep your coffee scalding and your hand not, come straight from a tree. something to think about. more work to be done…
I wonder if it could be implemented state-wide?
but as with so many new initiatives, it may be easiest to give it a trial run in a city before approaching the state with the idea. that seems to be the pattern across the country, with Portland and LA trying out similar initiatives.
for all communities not named Boston [or maybe Cambridge]. The problem for smaller communities is this: the local grocery store could quickly go out of business if residents just develop a habit to go to the supermarket the next town over for their big shopping trip. Sure, they might hit the local Piggly Wiggly for milk and bread on the way home, but enough people might shift town shopping to have a substantial impact on the bottom line.
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p>If the store is too close to the border, they’re impacted by the difference in regulation. Just look at sales of soda and beer in MA near the NH border, then look at sales in NH near the MA border.
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p>If Boston took the lead on the bags, I think we could see Cambridge, Brookline, Newton, Waltham, Somerville, Wellesley, Arlington, Lexington, Belmont jump on one at a time, slowly increasing the area where the ban was in place.
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p>Of course, Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket could do it independently, and maybe even P-Town, thanks to geography.
especially in a commuter region like, well, most of eastern mass! people commute into and out of seattle too, but my guess is not nearly to the extent they do around boston. so, seattle will have some “porous borders” losses to stores that don’t have to participate, but the city has enough of a stationary population that i think the program will work well. seattle is already pretty recycle conscious. and it’s not all carrot. the city uses the stick of doing random garbage checks for recyclable. too many in your trash, and you get fined.
I think the water thing is excellent. Time after time you hear about how public tap water is as good or better than bottled water. Sure the bottled stuff is easier when you’re on the go, but how often do you see people drinking it in their homes? Too often.
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p>Surely a Brita would make still-nervous water drinkers a little more comfortable, no?
is just wasted if not bottled. it feeds headwater streams. so this is also a question of resource allocation and environmental quality.
Los Angeles will have banned them by 2010…and there is a bill in the Calif. Legislature to follow suit.
As a former City Council staffer, I floated this idea about three years ago. Unfortunately, while my boss was game, there wasn’t a lot of support from the rest of the Council. Here’s to hoping that things have changed in the interim.
make short sighted decisions which result in unintended consequenses. A push for reusable bags would be a better alternative.
from this website. I’m tired of feel-good legislation and know-nothing politicians.
Pls disregard that which is irrelevant.
Neither paper nor plastic are good for the environment — they both have problems.
Actually I wasn’t trying to argue that either plastic or paper was not bad for the environment – more that plastic often gets a bad rap when you look deeper into the whole of paper bags. Thats why I started with a push for reusable. Full dsclosure: I work for a plastic bag manufacturer and we RECYCLE tons every week and spend tens of thousands annually on being friendly to the environment. Enlightend self-interest as opposed to self-interest.
but to be fair, 3 years after that paper bag gets buried, it ceases to exist. The plastic bag will remain a plastic bag.
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p>Paper bags haven’t been found to wreak havoc on sea life, which tend to choke on the bag or try to eat it, leading to digestive problems. Paper bags also don’t seem to contribute to litter in quite the same way, since they don’t easily get picked up by the wind and deposited in tree branches, etc. I don’t know which requires more oil per bag, since the manufacturing and distribution processes are different.
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p>Both have different sets of problems, and in most cases the use of them is inherently wasteful when compared to re-using a canvass bag. Personally, I don’t think the issue is particularly important in a climate change context since it’s such a small percentage of energy use. I do think that it’s an important issue in terms of litter and certain organisms in particular ecosystems. I’ve also spent significant time in Ireland’s cities and countryside before and after their bag fee and the change is thorough and wonderful. Northern Ireland, which didn’t implement the ban, still looks like the Republic used to w.r.t. bags, and it’s a sad sight indeed.
One such article said you can still read newspapers after 6 years in the landfill and some will never decompose, maybe thats just for newsprint though. But I don’t disagree with your points. I guess the reusable bag is the best answer but I would add this. A little common sense on the part of the public would go a long way. STOP THE LITTERING. THINK about the consequences of your simple everyday habits. Give a sh%t. Get back to that enlightend part of being self interested. It would really be great if people used reusable bags without any mandate or penalty for not doing so.