Isaiah McDaniel bags groceries into a customer's cloth bags at PCC Natural Market in Seattle. In July, the city council enacted a 20-cent tax on plastic shopping bags, a measure that is being challenged by an industry group. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson/FILE)
Industry group fighting Seattle plastic-bag tax
By Eoin O'Carroll | 09.15.08
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported last week that the American Chemistry Council spent $180,625 in August fighting a 20-cent fee on paper and plastic shopping bags.
The “green fee,” which also imposes a tax on Styrofoam containers, was approved by Seattle’s city council in July and is set to go into effect Jan. 1, 2009. But the ACC, an Arlington, Va.-based trade group that mainly represents plastics and chlorine manufacturers, has been trying to have the issue put to a citywide referendum. To that end, the the Coalition to Stop the Seattle Bag Tax, which consists of the ACC and 7-Eleven, Inc., has collected about 22,000 signatures to get the referendum on the ballot. (That works out to about $8 per signature, notes the P-I.)
If the coalition’s efforts are successful – and the Seattle Times reports that it looks like they will be – then the ordinance will be held off until the voters decide to accept or repeal it. The earliest it would go on the ballot is August 2009.
Some Seattleites are confused by the campaign. In a separate article, the P-I quotes one signatory – a shopper who brings her own bags to the supermarket – who thought she was signing a petition to outlaw plastic bags.
The coalition argues that a 20-cent bag fee would cost consumers $300 each year. This figure seems high. First, it assumes that the tax wouldn’t be at all effective in dissuading shoppers from using the bags, which is the point of the ordinance. Second, $300 assumes 1,500 bags per year, or almost 29 per week. The Worldwatch Institute estimates that Americans throw away some 100 billion bags per year, which works out to about 6 or 7 bags per American per week.
The site also asserts that Seattle found that 91 percent of its residents “reuse or recycle” plastic shopping bags. While this may very well be true – I’ll bet that most of us line our wastebaskets with the things – this is not the same thing as a 91 percent recycling rate. In fact, according to Worldwatch, only 0.6 percent of plastic bags are recycled.
The coalition says that in Ireland, which enacted a fee for plastic bags in March 2002, “consumers ended up purchasing heavier plastic bags to replace the shopping bags they previously reused around their homes. Today in Ireland, they use even more plastic bags of all types than they did before the tax” [emphasis in original]. As evidence, the coalition cites a report from a British plastics trade group that shows a six percent increase in the mass of plastic bags imported to Ireland from 2001 to 2006. But what they don’t mention is that the Irish population grew by more than eight percent during that period.
Seattle is just the latest front in the ACC’s battle against laws that seek to reduce plastic-bag consumption. In March 2007, San Francisco became the first US city to ban the bags, a decision condemned by the ACC, which argued that the ban would harm plastic-bag-recycling efforts. The ACC used the same argument in opposing anti-plastic-bag measures on Maui and Hawaii’s Big Island and in Malibu, Fla., which passed, and again when in opposing an act in California’s state legislature, which didn’t.
The ACC also often argues that making a plastic shopping bag uses only about 70 percent of the energy required to produce a paper bag that carries the same amount. But the group isn’t using this argument in Seattle, because the city seeks to tax both paper and plastic.
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2. Erik | 09.17.08
Why should the government get the 20 cents per bag? Shouldn’t the store get a portion of it for they’re trouble? What’s next, taxing my coffee cup from starbucks? This is ridiculous.
4. Greg Nickels | 09.22.08
Erik suggested that the stores should keep some of the proceeds from the fee. They will keep 5 cents to offset their costs (and keep all the savings from not having to purchase so many bags — currently 360,000,000 in Seattle alone). Small stores will keep 100% of the proceeds. The remainder of the proceeds will go into waste reduction programs.
Greg Nickels
Seattle Mayor
5. Sam | 09.27.08
So, is the ACC trying to argue against *even more* use of plastic bags as they seem to be in Ireland, or are they about not using less in Seattle? Are we supposed to be that stupid according to the ACC?
The costs to municipalities to deal with discarded plastic bags is 17 cents so the fee is fair and honestly tiny compared to the annoyances of plastic bags such as getting one caught under the car and twined up in the drive shaft.
What does the ACC think of the plastic islands in the Pacific that are the size of the United States? Is that their idea of recycling?
6. Z | 11.04.08
Clearly some of you don’t understand the impact of lobbying, the cost that is required to do it and the good that the ACC does. You criticize how they are spending their money and yet, how are you spending your money? Do not victimize this group and don’t claim to be perfect in your “environmentalism.” The ACC is able to do research and also fund research so that society can better understand misunderstood policies or chemical breakdowns. So stop moaning about things you haven’t looked into and take into consideration the political process and the money that must be spent in allowing your voice to be heard.
7. alan | 11.26.08
It is funny the argument about the store keeping money vs. the government. In Toronto Canada they are trying to adopt a bag tax and the tax goes to the store. Interestingly the comments on the news site there are the exact opposite as here, namely “why does the money not go to an environmental fund (government) instead of lining the executive’s pockets at the big stores”. Nothing pleases everyone. I applaud the decision to reduce waste regardless of implementation. How hard is it to use cloth bags?
8. Tim Dunn | 02.04.09
There are indeed plastics that biodegrade, and that can also be recycled with conventional plastic. They are made into grocery bags, and cost about the same as regular bags. See my website at:
Tim Dunn, Arlington WA
9. Dave Baker | 03.31.09
I own three cloth bags and I use them when I go to Kroger, Whole Foods, World Market, etc. If our spoiled culture didn’t feel so entitled to wander into grocery stores and get “free” bags with their purchases then our planet might last through the lives of our great grandchildren. How difficult or inconvenient is it to go shopping with your own bags? If we can’t even handle that slight preventative measure our planet is seriously doomed.
“Grandpa, why are there 500 million people all living within a two hour drive of our 300 square foot home?”
“Because, darling, grandpa and grandma were asked to shoulder the inconceivable burden of carrying these tremedously overbearing cloth grocery bags to the store when we were younger. Well, this was so intrusive and insulting that we fought it with all of our collective might. There were other terribly insulting inconveniences that we were too proud and entitled to succumb to and then all of a sudden Iceland and Greenland melted and the oceans rose 100 feet and yadayadayada… But keep your chin up sweety. We’re a proud family who won’t let the man get over on us. Now why don’t you go out and play in the dinner-table-sized yard. But don’t forget to put your oxygen mask and the protective sun suit on!”
10. Kate | 04.03.09
Bring on the “tax”! IMHO - Anything that discourages or brings awareness of plastic bag usage is a good thing. http://becheap.wordpress.com/2009/04/03/stop-using-plastic-bags-switch-to-reusable-bags/
11. Christopher-Peter: Maingot | 06.05.09
Seattle, New Zealand, Connecticut, New York, Toronto, or “tim buck two”….The plastic bag “legislation” and or “ACT” is simply another convoluted government “green plan” marketing scheme, and again, it’s just putting another target on the consumer’s backs and bucks too. Does anyone truly believe that they (consumers) were getting these plastic bags from the stores (retailers) for free, before? Do you honestly feel loved by your retailers & plastic bag manufacturers? And, you don’t seriously believe “they” were giving away these before this latest “TAX GRAB ACT” right? No! You were paying for it before. The price of the plastic bag was built into the price of your steak and eggs…but now, you’ll simply be paying for it again, because your government is seeing (TAX) to it. I don’t know about others out there, but it seems to me like there is some back scratching going on here folks. If you don’t have a re-usable bag, then you should get some…plastic bags should be out-law-ed all together. Some people are rich and, don’t care about the 5 cents for a plastic bag, or the environment, for that matter!
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1. Nikolai | 09.16.08
The American Chemistry Council should just take a deep breath and put that money into researching better uses for plastic. For crying out loud, already.