Poll Finds Less Support for Bag Tax

I agree with Sylvia C. To take it a step further, why are we being taxed when already nearly all Seattleites use recyclable bags?

I feel like in a recession this is the last thing that should be taxed - and Mayor Nickles is of course picking the least important item on the economic agenda to make a big deal about.

Here would be a better solution: Provide economic incentives (maybe tax BREAKS) for businesses to incorporate environmentally-friendly practices, instead of taxing the consumer. Ten percent of us are out of work anyway and can't afford another tax!

Almost everyone I know uses reusable bags for grocery shopping. But sometimes you make unplanned purchases when you are out and about, and not even the cute little roll-up bag will fit in my purse or any guy's pocket (not everyone carries backpacks, hello!). When I go shopping with my car, fine, no plastic bags needed.

I cannot believe Seattle is worrying about this, we have bigger problems. Let another city, like Miami or Chicago, take this on. We are already the canvas bag capital.

does anyone else think it's completely fucking inane that people in this city get completely freaked the fuck out about a 20 cent fucking plastic bag tax because they're too fucking lazy to carry a couple of god dam fucking canvas bags in their god dam backpacks, but none of you do more than raise a fucking eyebrow, shake your perfectly fucking coiffed heads and say, "it's terrible" when faced with true fucking problems like Darfur, two wars and all the other seriously fucked up shit in the world?

I'm sorry Seattle but stop your fucking whining when you're asked to shoulder just a bit of the fucking burden that is your god dam fair fucking share and BUCK THE FUCK UP!

This is an idiotic "debate" manufactured by the plastic industry and yet you all fall for it hook, line and sinker as some sort of "personal freedom" thing. We're talking about PLASTIC BAGS! This is not a question: plastic bags have a hidden cost thanks to the extraction of the oil and all its attendant affects on our environment. If you're going to use them, you should pay the real cost for them and shut the fuck up about it so the rest of us can get on to trying to make a difference in this fucking world.

Seriously. Just fucking accept your responsibility already for crying out loud.

Come on, people, get real. Is it that difficult to bring your own bag? Even if you ride a bike, I don't know anyone who couldn't fit one of those little chico bags in their carry on. You want a plastic bag maybe once or twice a month to put your garbage in? Why don't you buy the biodegradable ones instead of supporting the oil-chugging plastics industry? They're about $10 a year for 50 bags, and it would be a heck of a lot better than dumping your plastic into the landfill.

I don't really trust these polls, quite frankly, but I think it'd be ridiculous if a progressive city like Seattle that supposedly recycles more than 50 percent of its trash could not pass this fee.

Heck, at least they're not trying to ban the plastic bags. This way, if you just have to have them, you pay the 20 cents and understand what damage the plastic is doing to the earth!

The 20 cents of the fee (FYI, it's not a 'tax') go to distribute free reusable bags (one for each family, plus more for low income folks), compensate the store for implementation, and to educate people about the program.

It is a tax.

If it were a fee, retailers could charge what they wanted for it and there wouldn't be a lame government "education program" around it.

The 20 cents of the fee (FYI, it's not a 'tax') go to distribute free reusable bags (one for each family, plus more for low income folks), compensate the store for implementation, and to educate people about the program.

Some more specifics on the poll:

It's an off-year primary election on August 18th, so most folks aren't paying much attention (the beach is a lot nicer than reading news sites!). That's why we need a bit of caution in reading the numbers on the bag fee (after all, another recent poll by the same outfit found it ahead). Throw in the wild cards that it's our first August and first all mail ballot and it's still anybody's guess how this will turn out.

This survey also included a lot of people who probably won't be voting in the primary, and these folks are likely to be the least plugged in. I think those who know what's going on will see through the plastic industry propaganda and vote for Referendum 1.

"Why the hell don't you just get reusable bags like everyone else?"

Because I recycle them as trash bags. I live alone and don't need a gigantic trash can in my kitchen, using grocery bags eliminates having to buy trash bags as well as promotes taking out the trash so it doesn't cause any odors in my kitchen. It would be absurd to have to purchase special bags designated as "trash" bags when I could just reuse my grocery bags as I have been since childhood.

I have had reusable grocery bags for decades because I frequently travel to Germany to visit my dad's family and would pick them up while shopping there. The problem was when I thought I was clever in college to take them to Safeway (they were bigger and easier to carry) they looked at me like I was some kind of freak (merely 6 years ago).

Now as it has caught on (as soon as Oprah says it's good to be green everyone is), I take them when my garbage bag supply is overflowing. And honestly, I've paid the 10 cent fee at stores like Ikea before when I did need a bag and forgot the monster blue Ikea bag. I didn't mind, because Ikea makes it clear that the 10 cents is to cover the cost of providing the bag. The city of Seattle has decided to impose excessively high per-bag taxes that are not paying the store to provide me said bag, it's only the city hall treasure chest.

When it is clear that the cost of the bag is the cost to the store to provide me a plastic bag then I'll approve of the bag fee.

> Why the hell don't you just get reusable bags like everyone else?

Uh, maybe cause we don't want to carry bags around with us everywhere we go? Not everyone fits into the stereotypical drive-your-car-to-the-grocery-store model. Sometimes I bike to the grocery store, or walk. Often this is on the way home from work, and I don't want to bring a collection of bags with me to work everyday. Or I'll stop for groceries on the way home from the bar and I clearly won't be carrying reusable bags with me then.

The problem with a bag tax is it's just an extra tax on the consumer and it doesn't account for environmentally-friendly methods of shopping. Like if I bike to the grocery store instead of driving, and then recycle my bags when I get home, I'm saving petroleum equal to probably hundreds or thousands of plastic bags.

Exactly. And what about all the extra water and phosphate-filled detergent it will take to clean the reusable bags? I don't think the fine folks at city council thought this through.

See here for small, convenient bags you can carry in a satchel or a bike bag.

This isn't just about people who drive to grocery stores; I always walk to the grocery store and have never found it terribly onerous to carry a bag or two, nor would it be onerous to have to pay 20 cents if, for instance, you really have to go to the store but don't have a reusable on you.

Look, it's hard to actually make a difference environmentally--for years, people have been preaching "do your part," but everyone gets screwed by the people (the majority of people, I might add) that don't do their part or come up with some justification for why what they're doing is okay. I agree that it's great you bicycle, and in the long run, yes, you're already doing more to help than a simple bag switch. Solving problems requires policy choices to change behavior. The same people who oppose the bag tax also throw a fit about the styrofoam ban, but growing up in Portland, who banned styrofoam like 20 years ago, it wasn't until I moved here that I even really encountered it.

The point is, this isn't that big a deal, and while it may be only the tip of the iceberg, there's a hell of a lot of plastic garbage bags in the world and they're totally unnecessary. As I mentioned yesterday, there's a floating mass of them in the Pacific covering an area about twice the size of Texas. Voluntary recycling is not going to do much on its own with a problem of this scale.

This is politicians trying to pull a fast one on us. Or just a poorly thought-out referendum. Ask yourself why the city wants to put the tax burden on consumers rather than working with businesses first to get them to offer environmentally friendly options. Traditionally stores have been responsible for paying for and providing bags to the consumer to carry the goods they paid for from the store.

Hasn't someone invented biodegradable disposable bags yet? Sure the costs would be higher, but if we really care about making the switch then that would be better.

Just because the intentions of the referendum are good doesn't mean it's the right way to do it. We don't have to accept the first proposal that comes across the table.

I found this website through a web search for "seattle bag tax":

http://www.seattlebagtax.org/lettertocitycouncil.html

It's a group of economists that opposes the bag tax because they say it will have little if any effect on the environment. I haven't read all their analysis but just want to point out that there may be another side to this story and it doesn't seem like people have really thought about whether the tax referendum would actually do any good.

There's also this site:

http://www.stoptheseattlebagtax.com/

Jeremy, in response to your claim that it's not onerous to have to pay 20 cents extra if you couldn't bring reusable bags with you: actually, it's more than 20 cents. That's *per bag*! On some of my shopping trips I buy $100 worth of groceries and need about 10 bags. So $2 is not trivial - and on a grocery bill of $100 that's actually a 2% *additional* sales tax.

Also, this is *not* the same as the styrofoam ban. With the styrofoam ban we had comparable alternatives that the businesses affected could implement (switch to cardboard or biodegradable containers). I'm pretty business friendly, but even I can see it's easier to ask a business to go out and buy 1000 biodegradable containers than it is to ask their 1000 customers to go out and each buy a biodegradable container. That's why this bag tax is coming at the problem from the wrong end. Go at it from the business side first, where only a few thousand businesses will need to change their ways, rather than a million customers.

FYI there's also a discussion going on at the PI: http://blog.seattlepi.com/seattlepolitics/archives/173976.asp