Bagless in Seattle: Green cultists to tax plastic and paper
When last I covered the environmental zealots in my old stomping grounds of Seattle, Mayor Greg Nickels was terrorizing the kids at Christmas time with tales of Santa and the reindeer drowning if they didn’t use compact fluorescent Gore bulbs. What are they up to now? The green cultists are preparing to impose a 20-cent tax on both paper and plastic bags in a bid to force everyone to use those itty-bitty cloth bags that’ll fit a head of organic lettuce and little else:
Seattle could trump even the greenest of American cities with fines on foam and taxes on bags — both paper and plastic, city politicians say.
Seattle would impose a 20-cent-per-bag “green fee” and outlaw foam food containers next year under a proposal announced Wednesday. Aiming to persuade Seattleites to ditch disposable bags, the city hopes to send a free reusable bag to every Seattle household, Mayor Greg Nickels said.
“No other city has done what we’re suggesting here,” Nickels said. “These actions will take tons of plastic and foam out of our waste stream. … The best way to handle a ton of waste is not to create it in the first place.” Eventually, Seattle restaurants also would be forbidden from using plastic food containers that can’t be recycled or composted, according to rules being developed by Nickels and City Council President Richard Conlin. Some major questions about the policies remain — from political differences over how to spend the taxes to outstanding technical dilemmas. If adopted by the council, the fee would apply to disposable bags distributed at grocery, convenience and drug stores. The polystyrene foam ban would force restaurants and stores to find alternative egg cartons, meat trays, plates, “clamshells” and cups.
The foam and bag rules would go into effect Jan. 1. The plastic food container restrictions would be implemented July 2010.
“It’s a big symbolic step, but it’s also a very concerted step in the right direction,” Conlin said.
The environmental benefits of these bans are dubious. As OpenMarket.org points out, “Plastic bags play a minimal role in filling landfills–they are squishable, if people haven’t noticed–and often are reused by consumers for multiple purposes.” In other words: This is yet another empty gesture to give smaller-is-better elites another opportunity to impose their preferences on everyone else:
At the PCC store near Green Lake Wednesday, the idea of answering the question of “paper or plastic?” with “cloth” seemed entirely Seattle to Wendy Asbury. Asbury switched to cloth bags when she moved here eight months ago, she said.
“I’m from the Southwest, where everything is about gluttony and waste,” she said. “That’s what I loved about moving here; everything is so ‘green.’ ” But there were opponents, too, and the proposal set off a debate between friends in the PCC parking lot.
Jenn Young said encouraging people to use cloth seemed less onerous than penalizing them with the fee. “I disagree,” responded Naomi Fujinaka. “I’ve been bringing my cloth bag for 25 years.”
Young said: “It might be hard on families. If you have a family of six with four kids, and you go shopping once a week and you have 10 grocery bags, that can get to be a lot of money.” “Then you’ll know to bring your bag next time,” Fujinaka said. “We really have to change our behavior.”
And we know they don’t just want to stop at changing your choice of shopping bags.
While your kids and city councils have been brainwashed by the anti-bag crusade, scientists in Europe point out the facts and explode the myths that gave rise to the cult:
“The Government is irresponsible to jump on a bandwagon that has no base in scientific evidence,” said Lord Taverne, the chairman of Sense about Science. “This is one of many examples where you get bad science leading to bad decisions which are counter-productive. Attacking plastic bags makes people feel good but it doesn’t achieve anything.”
Campaigners say that plastic bags pollute coastlines and waterways, killing or injuring birds and livestock on land and, in the oceans, destroying vast numbers of seabirds, seals, turtles and whales. However, the Times has established that there is no scientific evidence to show that the bags pose any direct threat to marine mammals.
They “don’t figure” in the majority of cases where animals die from marine debris, said David Laist, the author of a seminal 1997 study on the subject. Most deaths were caused when creatures became caught up in waste produce. “Plastic bags don’t figure in entanglement,” he said. “The main culprits are fishing gear, ropes, lines and strapping bands. Most mammals are too big to get caught up in a plastic bag.”
He added: “The impact of bags on whales, dolphins, porpoises and seals ranges from nil for most species to very minor for perhaps a few species.For birds, plastic bags are not a problem either.”
The central claim of campaigners is that the bags kill more than 100,000 marine mammals and one million seabirds every year. However, this figure is based on a misinterpretation of a 1987 Canadian study in Newfoundland, which found that, between 1981 and 1984, more than 100,000 marine mammals, including birds, were killed by discarded nets. The Canadian study did not mention plastic bags.
Fifteen years later in 2002, when the Australian government commissioned a report into the effects of plastic bags, its authors misquoted the Newfoundland study, mistakenly attributing the deaths to “plastic bags.”
The figure was latched on to by conservationists as proof that the bags were killers. For four years the “typo” remained uncorrected. It was only in 2006 that the authors altered the report, replacing “plastic bags” with “plastic debris”. But they admitted: “The actual numbers of animals killed annually by plastic bag litter is nearly impossible to determine.”
In a postscript to the correction they admitted that the original Canadian study had referred to fishing tackle, not plastic debris, as the threat to the marine environment.
Regardless, the erroneous claim has become the keystone of a widening campaign to demonise plastic bags.
David Santillo, a marine biologist at Greenpeace, told the Times that bad science was undermining the government’s case for banning the bags. “It’s very unlikely that many animals are killed by plastic bags,” he said. “The evidence shows just the opposite. We are not going to solve the problem of waste by focusing on plastic bags. “It doesn’t do the government’s case any favours if you’ve got statements being made that aren’t supported by the scientific literature that’s out there. With larger mammals it’s fishing gear that’s the big problem. On a global basis plastic bags aren’t an issue. It would be great if statements like these weren’t made.”
Looks like it’s too late.
***
Side note: The beleaguered plastic bag celebrated its 75th birthday last week.
Say goodbye to plastic. Say hello to smug crap like this:
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- today in irrational freakouts: fees for shopping bags | Seattle Metblogs
- ecotyrants.com | Paper or Plastic? That will be 20 cents each in Seattle
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I’m lost. Who is Stangelove and what’s his story?
As the wife of a life long fan of the Dolphins. I object to your blatant, albeit, correct observation regarding the lack of success that football team has had recently. They are however, the only undefeated NFL team evah. Take that Patriots fans!!!
*that dig was really for Dakine*
An Ode to Plastic Bags:
Oh, plastic bags!
So many uses.
Unlike cloth bags,
They don’t soak up juices.
Perfect for small
Trash cans in the loo.
Is there nothing
This wee bag can’t do?
Use them to hold
Diapers so stinky.
If only they weighed more,
We could throw them at Code Pinky!
Okay, so it kinda went downhill at the end.
#103 CO of Fort Housewife:
Rim shot to you!
Oh, yes, 20-25+ years ago, when our three were in diapers, the about-to-be-reused plastic bags were referred to as ca__ bags!
Veeeerrrry useful!
DUDE!
You must enjoy sand in the KY too…
Hate to be the outlier on this thread, but there is a point to all of this. The number of plastic shopping bags we wind up with in a month, even with reusing them for trash liners, doggy poop clean up, still amounts to quite a pile, which we take to our local grocery store for recyling. I suspect many however, don’t.
And while there is the argument that culmatively these bags take up very little space when compared to other, bulkier refuse, these bags don’t degrade and I would add that when the number of these bags multiplied by the God-knows-how-many are used and disposed of throughout the country, I’d say the impact is not small.
Now I open my commenst to a merciless pummeling.
Sometimes, there’s so much beauty in plastic bags, I feel like I can’t take it…
I’ve lived in GA, SC, MS, and KY. Every grocery store (except Meijer) offers bins to recycle the bags.
I use all the plastic bags I get–there are two people and two cats in the house; we generate one plastic bag of trash a day, usually.
Meijer does sell great flat-bottomed bags for a buck. I have a few in each car and can get $40-50 worth of groceries in each–cans, carton of oj, you name it. Washable, too, but I don’t put milk or meat in them to cut down on germs.
Is there any problem that libs can’t solve by adding more taxes?
Taxing the bags is stupid but I’ll admit I use “cloth” bags. I’ve got 4 canvas (24 oz canvas) bags from Duluth Trading that I take to the grocery store. Each bag will hold over 100lbs. It makes it a hell of a lot easier to bring groceries back into the house from my car.
Fire Hose Tote Bag
This is the perfect self-imposed boycott… when I go to the grocery store, I’ll just go and spend my money in the ones outside the Seattle city limits.
Good one, mayor.
30,
There is hope for the Fins! The team is being sold off within two years. New owner, new hope! I may even become a Fin fan for the first time ever!!!
TexasTiger, I’d like to buy you a couple adult beverages for the entertainment reading your posts. Keep on keepin’ on.
lol, that sounds like an obama ad….. ewwwwwwww.
We here use plastic bags a lot, at home. In fact, Saturday, we’ll be traveling south and will use the bags to transport some stuff, including plants, for family. This reminds me of the returnable bottle tax. It was supposed to cut down on thrown away bottles. It didn’t. I agree that it’s nothing more than “feel good” politics steered by politicians into another tax. The environmentalists will cheer as they line their trash cans with plastic bags.
I guess my wife and I were ahead of the curve here. We got two similar bags from LL Bean 15 years ago. Large, stiffside, and durable and sufficient for all our groceries. Probably have another 3 -5 years of use before they wear out.
We just got tired of collecting vast quantaties of plastic bags, no matter how many other uses we found for them.
The problem with the cloth bags I’ve seen offered by our local markets is they are too small and won’t stand up when bagging.
I almost always bag our groceries. The baggers have no idea how to efficiently load our monster bags!
Its too bad these environmentalists can’t be more consistant. I remember it was the rage beginning in the ’70’s to use plastic bags (”Paper or plastic?” and you got disapproving look if you chose paper) and save a tree : )
It probably IS about the money Seattle could collect, as the stores could just as easily be encouraged to offer a small discount for those who provide their own bags (and do their own bagging).
The council of our little town with one supermarket passed a non-binding bylaw (waste of time) outlawing platic bags. For the most part it was because our garbage dump is supposedly filling up.
I asked the councillors and the green freaks if they knew how many bags the market actually used. None of them knew nor cared to know. I asked the store manager and it works out to a volume of less than 4′ x 4′ x 8′ for a whole year. Infinitesmal compared to the size of the dump.
I went back to the councillors and green freaks with that info and added that most people re-use the bags for garbage and would probably have to buy new bags for trash liners. I also mentioned the hypocisy because there is a by-law that all garbage must be in green garbage bags and those bags must be tied up inside our garbage cans. The garbage collector won’t pick them up otherwise. They all said the same thing, “Every little bit helps.” When I explained that it wasn’t helping, they said it’s the thought that counts. I said the “thought” is not what counts. The gov’t should be concerned with fixing roads, the water system and garbage disposal and not wasting it’s time (our money) on feel good by-laws.
The supermarket (food co-op) gave every member two strong re-usable cloth-like bags which I have been using since. They can hold about as much as I like to carry in one hand(about 25 lbs). They also sell them for a buck a piece, which seems reasonable. However I see very few people still using them (about 6 months later). With more than two thousand members, that’s a cost of $4000 that the co-op board of directors threw away to save a few dollars on plastic bags. They thought they were doing the right thing.
A disposable-product society is not a sustainable one. And petroleum is too valuable to waste on throwaway plastic and styrofoam containers. I don’t use plastic bags, I use $1 nice sturdy Albertson’s reusable shopping bags, don’t miss plastic at all. One can cherry pick statistics, but these bags and containers are not harmless to the environment.
They will also hinder reuse of other items in our landfills, biomass for example, that we may need one day due a growing population and diminishing biomass supplies. Hard to extract food leftovers if they are tossed away in un-biodegradable containers, and those containers prevent them from decomposing into usable compost. Top-soils are being depleted of minerals and nutrients, and their quantity is decreasing too.
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle!
You obviously know jack sh!t about British politics, so please keep your nose out of it. Call Me Dave is anything but a conservative.
From the Socialist Republic of Washington; it’s about the money, make no mistake. This idiotic mayor must stay up nights in a think tank to come up with his ideas. In the middle of an ‘almost recession’, instead of cutting back on unnecessary spending, he dives right in with “feel good” projects.
This is the city that put in outdoor toilets costing thousands of dollars each. Now they are going to remove them because the drug dealers use them for dealing, the gays use them for sex, and the druggies use them to shoot up.
Mr Mayor, how much did it cost King County to repaint all the King County police vehicles with a likeness of Martin Luther King? Money well spent by a cash strapped populace?
His ‘new’ project is to renovate Pike Place Market. I have a feeling that the general consensus on taxpayers paying for that idea was not what he hoped for.
The list goes on…..
My response to this BS is; all those bags that I save and reuse, will now be brought to the store with me. Just fill up the old ones thank you. Wonder how they’ll react to that? Back to the all night think tank for the mayor. I’m sure he’ll come up with something. What a moron!
Erv, clean up on aisle 93.
Government is never the solution to any problem. I am not going to use cloth or paper bags to empty the cat boxes.