I think you should consider where the bags end up and how resistant to biodegradation they are. I think you should be aware just how much 1/220th of all landfills is. You should consider how many plastic bags I have pulled off the Green River trail in the last two years, interrupting their pilgrimage into the river and out to the North Pacific gyre where they will join the massive island of trash afloat there.

Taxes do not only have the role of raising money. As with alcohol, gasoline and cigarettes, and soon marijuana in California- heavy taxation on harmful inelastic (in high demand regardless of price) products can assist people’s decision to choose alternatives.

Feel lucky we don’t outlaw them.

Ashley, I don’t know where you get your facts, but the amount of space plastic takes up in a landfill is not the point. Lets say it does only take .4% (now), why not help reduce that for the future? Yeah, we don’t have a ton of garbage floating around (especially not in nicer neighborhoods), but I still see plastic bags in the water (just did while paddle boarding in the sound yesterday). Maybe if people have to pay for those bags they will be more careful and not just throw them out? Or even better, they will take a canvas bag and not have to pay that fee.

Of course the plastics industry is just protecting their business and that is obviously legal. That doesn’t make it the RIGHT thing to do from an environmental standpoint. They aren’t going to do the right thing because it isn’t in their business interest, so we have to make sure we do the right thing and this fee helps encourage people to make those good choices.

And making bags with less plastic is also in their business interest: you think the price of plastic bags went down 70% for grocers? I doubt it.

Plastic bag legislation was initially designed to help decrease plastic bag litter or solve specific problems in places like China, Africa and Ireland. (Examples of ’specific problems’ include cows eating plastic bags in India and bags clogging drains in Bangladesh, etc.

Seattle does not have a litter problem (Voted #2 cleanest city in America last year by Forbes; plastic bags comprise 0.4% of landfill space) nor any issue similar to countries that have enacted PLASTIC BAG BANS (Note the emphasis here). Seattle is looking to TAX both PAPER AND PLASTIC. This is unheard of anywhere else in the WORLD.

Although you do a good job highlighting the financial support that the plastic industry has donated to the campaign, there is nothing illegal about what they are doing nor is it relevant to the actual problems that are embedded in the current proposal. The U.S. has a strong plastics lobby and it is only natural to assume that the industry will take the necessary steps to support a measure that will directly affect its business. However, the plastics industry is not ‘evil’ as you make it appear– consider, for example, that the standard plastic bag now requires 70% less plastic than 20 years ago.

Any thoughts? We’d love to hear from you.