On Crosscut, Doug McDonald writes a very well-balanced article talking about how he himself changed his mind about the bag fee, after initially being against it. There are plenty of people still weighing the pros and cons of this legislation and McDonald does a great job of addressing all the concerns.
Reusing grocery bags is like “re-using gloves, [or] a hat,” McDonald reminds us. We don’t think to wear plastic gloves and then throw them away at the slightest stain or mark — we should hardly think the same of the bags we fetch our groceries in. As McDonald notes, “if Referendum 1 passes, it’s still your choice.” You can bring our own bags, and there will be no fee.
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How I learned to love the bag fee
When you look into the oceans of problems plastic bags create, the case for Seattle’s well-crafted grocery-bag fee becomes overwhelming. And the opponents’ arguments are underwhelming.
Should Seattle voters take a modest step to dike a small part of the rise of disposable plastics flooding the world? Referendum 1 on the August 18 primary ballot puts the question by asking for a 20-cent fee for the disposable paper or plastic bag you otherwise would still get “free” at the drugstore, convenience store, or grocery.
Your green reflex won’t help you decide this one. The green voice for yes comes from some of the familiar environmentalists — always worth listening to, never to be given blind allegiance. On the other side the voice for no is embodied in well over a million greenbacks thrown against Referendum 1 by the people who make disposable plastic bags. With them spending at that rate, you won’t be able to avoid listening, even when you get tired of it.
Seattle’s Referendum 1 isn’t a single-minded crusade to save the world from plastics. Seattle shouldn’t try to do so. Plastic’s future is here, just as Mr. McGuire in The Graduate, a movie enshrined for younger generations on YouTube, famously predicted four decades ago to Ben Braddock.
I started out skeptical of Referendum 1, especially when it was first touted as a greenhouse gas reduction measure. That seemed a real stretch. But I’ve come around, endorsed the referendum and kicked in a $100 contribution. Here’s why.
Plastics are truly valuable in a host of realms. But it’s also true that with the use of plastics exploding at exponential rates, their manufacture and their very long-term persistence offer some real problems. There can always be too much of a good thing. Use can go beyond usefulness. That’s the case with disposable plastic bags. We are using too much plastic for more disposable bags than we need. And paper grocery bags, too — in Seattle, 360 million paper and plastic bags a year.
Referendum 1, we must remind ourselves, is even-handed. It’s not a push just to besmirch plastic and switch all the shoppers to kraft brown paper bags, which people around these parts used to call a sack. Paper grocery bags or sacks have their own problems. So no need here to argue about whether taking home the shopping in paper or plastic has the bigger carbon footprint or consumes the greater space in landfills.
Instead, Referendum 1 might be called the “disposable bags are no free lunch” program. The idea is that it would be cheaper all around, and usually better, if you carried your groceries home in an old-fashioned shopping bag that you would use and reuse. Like for example, re-using gloves, a hat, or a razor. A reusable shopping bag is much better than a plastic or paper high-tech throwaway product that has to be sorted out by Allied Waste when dumped by the recycle truck at the waste station at Third and Lander in SODO. Or blown around the city landscape as litter. Or, if it’s plastic, ingested by fish, turtles, whales, dolphins, shrimp, and marine micro-organisms after its found its way to break slowly, slowly into smaller pieces in Puget Sound and ultimately the oceans. These polyethylene plastic bags break up, but they don’t biodegrade. Ever.
If Referendum 1 passes, it’s still your choice.
