In Seattle, plastic is out, paper is in, for a price
Jun 20, 2012, 2:15 PM | Updated: Jun 21, 2012, 7:59 am
The great plastic shopping bag prohibition is about to launch in a city trying to enhance its green image, the “Emerald City.”
Seattle uses almost 300 million plastic bags every year so you can see why the city wants to cut back. The two biggest complaints are that the bags are made of oil and they pile up in landfills.
Starting July 1, you have to bring your own bag to the store or get charged a nickel for a paper bag. Dick Lilly, with Seattle Public Utilities says other cities don’t charge a bag fee but the idea in Seattle is to encourage the use of reusable bags.
“What we know is that in other cities in the United States, a nickel was plenty to remind people to bring a reusable bag,” he said.
Seattle joins Edmonds, Mukilteo, Issaquah (next year), Bainbridge, Portland, Los Angeles and San Francisco, among cities with a plastic bag ban.
A statement from the American Progressive Bag Alliance, which promotes the use of plastic bags, claims reusable bags are bad because they’re made in China. Worse than that, reusable bags, they say, harbor dangerous bacteria. A recent study did find various types of coliform bacteria but health experts say the average person is not going to get sick from their reusable grocery sack.
Besides, Hilary Karasz, with the Seattle King County Health Department says there’s an easy fix for the germs.
“Anybody who’s concerned about germs getting on their food, anywhere from farm to table, should follow basic food safety advice, which is to wash fruits and vegetables before eating,” said Karasz.
Maybe you don’t care about the five cent bag fee. Dick Lilly says stores are allowed to charge more per bag.
“We only require that a nickel be charged on the large, grocery store-sized bag or its equivalent in other stores but stores can charge more, they can charge for smaller bags, they can charge for the very heavyweight plastic bags that are still going to be allowed for some uses,” explained Lilly.
Some stores will not use up all their plastic bags before July 1 and they’re allowed to issue them until they do run out. For the rest of the year, the city will educate rather than enforce the new plastic bag ban.
