Everett passes its own ban on single-use plastic bags

Everett will now join Seattle and Tacoma in banning single-use plastic bags, following a decision from Everett’s City Council.

RELATED: Bill proposes statewide ban on single-use plastic bags

The plastic bag ban in Everett passed a City Council vote unanimously Tuesday night, and will go into effect Sept. 30, 2019.

The new law will include grocery stores and restaurants. A five cent charge will be enacted for the use of recyclable paper bags.

The city cited concerns over single-use plastic bags contaminating compost streams, causing “significant problems for recycling processors,” a direct threat to local wildlife, and the high cost associated with disposing of them.

Meanwhile, a statewide plastic bag ban is currently on the table.

“We are seeing plastic litter along the highways and in our public spaces. We need to reduce bags so that they don’t end up contributing to the litter going into our creeks and lakes,” Kent Councilwoman Brenda Fincher said in a news release. “Numerous countries have banned plastic bags and so we are behind the curve.”

This has been a contentious issue in the region for years now. Some argue that getting rid of single-use plastic bags keeps them out of landfills, and ultimately helps fight wasteful pollution.

Others still see a plastic bag ban as having the opposite of the intended effect.

“At the end of the day, plastic does use less energy to make, and it does cause less impact on water pollution,” Todd Myers, director of the Washington Policy Center’s Center for the Environment, told KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson.

RELATED: Plastic bag ban does more harm than good

Regardless of where you stand on plastic bags in Everett, you’re going to have to go elsewhere for them beginning in late-2019.

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