Next time the cashier says “paper or plastic,” think outside the bags. Think about ocean pollution, giant landfills and global warming, Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels says.
Then think to next year, when you might have to either pull out a reusable tote or pay 20 cents a bag.
Nickels and City Council President Richard Conlin proposed a 20-cent “green fee” Wednesday on all disposable bags to encourage customers to carry their milk and eggs home in their own bags.
One wonders where these bags will be manufactured, China?
Given the number of prisoners, maybe we could have this done by the same goodly folks who make our license plates?
On the other hand, what happens if folks start disposing of their cloth bags??
Has anyone considered converting the cellulose of the paer shopping bags into bio diesel?
Why not have a 20 cents fee AND a five cents back fee for their being returned! Imagine the street people asking for used bags rather than a dollar?
Hmmm.. at 100 cents per dollar and 20 cents per bag, maybe we could use bags as currency?
Being as even Fred Meyer’s already giving a credit to customers who bring their own bags, Mayor Quarters is more than a little behind the curve on this one.
Anybody got a good suggestion about where to recycle used plastic bags in Everett? Our recyclers don’t handle them any different than regular garbage. Albertsons used to take them, but they don’t any more. I hate to just see them thrown in the landfill. We’ve got far too many to re-use, ourselves.
@ 2
Well, fuck, if Fred Meyer’s doing it, then Jesus, hold the fucking horses, right? And Mayor Quarters? That’s a clever play on the name “Nickels”, right? Goddamn clever.
@ 3
Seattle recycles them, as long as they are “bundled” (that means a bunch of bags inside one bag) together. They don’t take them loose. You may want to check with your local folks to see if they’ll take them “bundled”.
@3
Most Fred Meyer’s will take them.
While this is a very good thing, switching to cloth bags wont do much on the global warming front, which is mostly caused by cars, trucks, cheap crap made in China, our constant buying of that cheap crap and coal fired power plants.
I love the graphic!
#2: This would mean the end of the Fred Meyer bag credit, since the stick will do the job better than the carrot.
Ireland started doing this country-wide some years ago (there shoppers pay $.33 per bag) and it has been very successful in reducing the waste. It’s becoming a trend in this country to punish the use/waste of new plastic bags:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02.....2bags.html
Gah, this is the nanny-state (city) at it’s worst. Next there’ll be bag use inspectors on the city payroll like the recycling inspectors.
The implication that the citizens are too farking stupid to notice their environment tells you what the mayor and the council thinks about you. “It’s for the environment” is only slightly less offensive than “It’s for the children”.
I’ll deal with: paper?, plastic? or re-use? The mayor should pull his thumb out of his butt and fix the damn viaduct.
Full disclosure: We use a combination of our collection of re-usable bags _and_ paper-inside-plastic for reuse in the kitchen garbage can.
delete the “s” on “thinks’ in that post. The proper tense didn’t survive the edit process.
Cash cow for boss-hog-Nickels. Need more revenue for his projects.
When is the mayor gonna get smaller police cars instead of gas hogs?
BTW: My QFC takes those bags in a recycle bin…..and that’s in Carnation.
I reuse my paper bags for cleaning out bird cages, just as I line said bird cages with old newspapers. If I have to pay extra for them, it’s a pretty minor price compared to the price of parrot food.
Most Safeway stores have a collection box for used plastic bags.
Of course, there’s nothing to say you can’t re-use the plastic bags yourself, at least a couple of times before those stupid hand-hold things rip out. Then go ahead and recycle ’em.
And, I admit to being guilty as charged about “borrowing” someone else’s moniker for Seattle’s Grand High Imperial Potentate–er, I mean mayor.
Funny thing…everyone assumes that Nickels is a liberal/Democrat/progressive or something like that. However, being that it’s theoretically a non-partisan office, he isn’t required to tell anyone what he is…nor can I personally recall his ever having done so.
13 Maybe when the bad guys all go on diets.
Oh, and don’t forget, you should re-use your plastic bags to bag up your kitty and doggie poop…otherwise, you can spread toxoplasmosis and canine distemper to wildlife, even marine wildlife.
Never flush your pet poop – it should to into the garbage/landfill or be composted.
Our family household recycles these damn things, and boy do they accumulate. We use the larger Target bags to hold them, and it can fill up to the size of a beachball in just a couple of weeks.
A big contributor are the bags that enclose my P-I every morning, rain or shine. Too bad I can’t leave out a cloth bag for the paper carrier.
13/16 Actually, this issue will take care of itself as the current fleet of Crown Vics wears out. Ford doesn’t make ’em any more.
Those bags make wonderful packing material.
That’s an interesting comment ArtFart as I remember The Stranger calling Mark Sidran, Nickels opponent Mark “Republican” Sidran…
DUH! Another ASSWIPE NICHOLS MONEY-GRAB
Costco or Sams Club doesn’t give you a bag, they offer you a box, these grocery stores have plenty of boxes, and they will just rapidly change to boxes, damn that was easy –
Nichols and his herd of thieves don’t get a F’n dime!
So Seattle will will hire all these high paid Union bag Bums to search for what? Nothing! There are only cardboard boxes at the checkout line..? Damn, foiled again!
Liberalism in Seattle is just too too funny to watch
We’ll all be burying diapers and kitty litter in the back forty instead disposing of them in plastic bags.
No 10 Million to Fat Ass Nichols, but I’d be glad to send him a box of used Kitty litter or soiled diapers anytime I choose.
Will all the lazy, non-contributing, unemployed, loligaggers abusing the welfare and disability system be exempt?
@18 I get way more plastic from the paper carriers than anywhere else, since I already use cloth bags for groceries. This isn’t going to do anything to reduce plastic bags… unless the mayor goes after the paperboy too.
And please tax away plastic on bread baked goods, cakes, precooked chickens and ribs, vegetables, beans, peas, macaroni, we’d like to kill a few more trees and have these wrapped in paper or cardboard.
Please tax plastic wraps on meats and fish, we can throw them in our canvas bags for the ride home.
And please tax plastic bottles for orange juice, milk, Ice Cream, Water, etc etc. They are not expensive enough yet
And just one other item that no politician seems to think of that actually makes sense,
WHY DON’T YOU TAX OR OUTLAW, PREFERABALLSSSY COMPLETELY OUTLAW, THE ROGUE F’n FAX SERVERS THAT SHOVE OUT BILLIONS OF FAXES PER NIGHT TO BILLIONS OF UNWANTING FAX MACHINES DAILY, BURNING BILLIONS OF UNWANTED PAGES OF PAPER KILLING BILLIONS OF TREES. IF YOU ARE SO CONCERNED ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT!
JUST ASKIN!
@15 & 21:
Give me all your Nickels is a democrat:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Nickels
@25 – Very good point on auto dialer faxes! We come in every morning to about 20 or so faxes for everything to cheap meds to mortage rates!
@10 Roger Rabbit’s Plan For Free Plastic Bag Disposal
Let’s dig a hole in your yard and throw them in. There’s no more room for them at Cedar Hills, so we have to put them somewhere. Burying them on property owned by people who like plastic bags and think we should keep using them seems as fair a solution to the disposal problem as any.
@11 Proper sense didn’t survive the edit process, either. Never does in your posts.
@22 Funny how wingnuts bitch about paying 20 cents for the privilege of clogging up landfills with their plastic bags but don’t squeak a peep about their organ grinder monkey squandering $2 trillion on his recreational war in Iraq.
I read in Newsweek or Business Week (I forget which) that in WW2 the U.S. military consumed an average of 1.4 gallons of fuel per soldier per day, but in Iraq it’s 27.3 gallons per soldier per day, one reason being it takes a lot of diesel to keep the generators that run the air conditioners going 24/7. The enlisted schmucks don’t get air conditioning, of course; that’s for the officers.
Oh yeah, one more thing, the U.S. military pays around $5 a gallon for fuel (even though they don’t pay federal or state taxes on it). Why? No-bid contracts probably have something to do with it.
And our resident trolls are bitching about a 20-cent fee on plastic bags that pollute the environment for millions of years?
Give me a fucking break, asswipe hypocrites.
21 The irony, of course, being that Sidran actually is a self-professed Democrat.
31 They don’t wipe them, Roger. They lick them. Just ask Jane Balough’s mutt.