Seattle City Council approves 20 cent fee for plastic bags

July 31st, 2008 by Kendall
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The Seattle City Council approved a proposal (by a 6-1 margin) that will charge shoppers 20 cents for each plastic shopping bag they use. This is great news. The fee will go into effect in January.

Opponents of this proposal have said that it taxes those who cannot afford to purchase reusable bags. So to alleviate that cost, the city of Seattle will distribute reusable paper bags to all residents, also giving lower income residents additional bags to use.

The council also passed a ban on plastic foam food containers that is a two-phase project. The first phase will address take out containers and it will take effect in January as well. Restaurants will not be allowed to use plastic foam in their takeout containers. The second phase will take effect July 2010 and focuses on all plastic food containers and utensils. Businesses will be able to use only recyclable or biodegradable products for their food containers.

I’m glad to see that our city is taking steps to reduce the unnecessary waste produced by convenience. If you live in a place that is using plastic bags and you feel like you want to make changes to that, Bring Your Own Bag is a great organization that is fighting for that. They also recently posted to their blog specifically addressing the situation in North America.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, July 31st, 2008 at 1:04 am and is filed under Environment, General, Poverty, Social Justice, Take Action, policy, resources. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

  • Thanks for that link Jared. If it does go to the voters I really hope people can see that this is a serious problem worth a fight.
  • Jared
    in typical Seattle fashion this looks headed to the voters

    http://tinyurl.com/65p9xh

    bummer, we lose lots of good things to the ballot here in WA, public transit funding, a cool Viaduct solution, and now it is likely this as well.
  • Wow, that's a great step in the right direction!
  • Margaret de la Torre
    Your city has the right idea. Great blog Kendall

    If we had known how damaging plastics and foam containers would have been to our environment, would we have invented them? Here in Huetamo, Michoacan, Mexico, people carry plastic buckets to the restaurants and the local market to carry home food. Up to recently I thought How Odd! But, Just..........Maybe it is true what they say, "All in the end will go back to the way it was in the beginning", ----------- It sure looks that way to me!
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