Posted on 05/04/2008 5:12:17 PM PDT by Stoat
Forget the canvas sacks at home? Shoppers at grocery, convenience and drug stores will pay the price starting Jan. 1, if the City Council approves. A family buying six bags of groceries a week would spend $62.40 a year in bag fees. The city will issue one free reusable shopping bag to each household.
"The answer to the question 'Paper or plastic?' should be 'Neither,' " Nickels said at a news conference. "Both harm the environment. Every piece of plastic ever made is still with us in the environment, and the best way to handle waste is not to create it in the first place."
The proposed fee, the first of its kind in the nation, is the latest green legislation from a mayor intent on making environmental stewardship his legacy.
Nickels and Conlin have been working on a "zero-waste" strategy to reduce trash and encourage recycling. They also announced Wednesday a proposed ban on plastic-foam food containers and cups at food-service businesses, starting Jan. 1. Nonrecyclable plastic containers and utensils would be banned in 2010.
"It's about the use of scarce resources, about pollution of our environment, about litter in our streets and parks and the costs, both economically and environmentally, of throwing away a piece of Earth we have an opportunity to protect and preserve," Conlin said at the news conference, which Councilmembers Tim Burgess and Sally Clark also attended.
(heavily edited to comply with Free Republic posting requirements)
(Excerpt) Read more at seattletimes.nwsource.com ...
The subversive OSPRIGs amd WASPRIGs want to ding us .20 per paper or plastic bag in order to destroy yet another American industry?
I do have my own cloth grocery bags because they are easier to carry, but GREEN is a BILIOUS color when it becomes aggressively restrictive.
Didn’t I read somewhere about SOLIENT GREEN? As a matter of fact, that would serve a double purpose! Eating each other would vastly reduce the world population, as well as solve a food shortage problem, but I’d starve first!
Yup, I’m find myself tuning out whenever I hear GREEN.
I don’t compost citrus with the rest of the scraps. I dig a hole for the cat and dog poo and throw it in. I do that when I feel motivated :D Otherwise, the catpoo goes down the toilet bowl...lazy me.
A store could just toss them in the trash and count the $1 they paid as advertising. It can cost $20 in advertising to bring in a new customer. $1 is a cheap way to keep someone coming back. The cost of recycling a plastic bag is easily more wasteful than buying new.
Since the bags are made from petroleum I wonder if there's a way to make the bags dissolve in gasoline. Stuffing them into your gas tank and getting some mileage out of them might be a great way to efficiently recycle them.
Let me know if that works
Someone mentioned it earlier, but in some of the high-crime areas, those bags will be an invitation to shoplift. I chased a guy out of Borders a few years ago because I saw him stuff several DVDs into a large paper shopping bag, such as what you get at department stores after a big purchase.
You got that right! Love your tagline, BTW.
I *love* reusable bags. I’ve been doing it for years. Sometimes I’ve gotten funny looks and sometimes I get a “Where did you find those?” Mine have also been used as totes on vacation and to the beach, for trick-or-treat bags, all kinds of things. I recently got some new ones as the oldies are wearing out. I can get 2-3x as much stuff in one and they’re much easier to carry. I still get a few plastic bags now and then to use for small trash can liners but when I go shopping 2x a month, it’s nothing for me to bring home 30+ plastic bags (the few times I forgot to take my canvas ones). I can’t use up 60 or 70 bags in a month! (I do recycle the unused ones.)
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