By Lina Garcia
April 7, 2008

Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels and City Council President Richard Conlin joined together to propose a 20-cent green fee on all disposable shopping bags at the city’s grocery, drug and convenience stores and call for a ban on foam containers in the food service industry. If adopted by the city council, both waste prevention measures would take effect January 1, 2009.

Nickels and Conlin said the bag fee and foam ban will cut down on waste, reduce the use of environmentally harmful plastics and cut the production of greenhouse gases. The proposed actions were bolstered by a Seattle report that determined both paper and plastic are harmful to the environment.

“The answer to the question paper or plastic is neither - both harm the environment. Every piece of plastic ever made is still with us. The best way to handle a ton of waste is not to create it,” said Nickels. “This proposal is all about forming new habits. Taking a reusable bag to grocery stores and pharmacies is a simple thing that has an enormous impact.”

“The bag fee and foam ban are the right thing for the climate, our environment, and the long-term economic health of our city,” said Conlin. “We are turning Seattleites environmental values into tangible actions. This combination of environmental and economic stewardship will help ensure a truly sustainable city.”

Seattle Public Utilities (SPU) estimates that 360 million disposable bags are used in the city every year, most made of plastic, according to the city’s press release on the announcement. Almost 75 percent of these come from the city’s 575 grocery, drug and convenience stores (out of a total 3,600 retail and restaurant businesses). It indicates that while Seattleites have a good record of recycling paper bags, most plastic ends up in landfills. Paper bags will also be subject to the fee because, taking into account the environmental costs of logging and shipping, they are actually worse for the planet.

The green fee is intended to encourage and promote the use of reusable shopping bags. The city will set aside $1 million to distribute these bags and promote their advantages. Retailers will keep 5-cents of every bag to cover administrative costs. Retailers grossing less than $1 million annually will keep the entire 20-cent fee.

Charging a fee for disposable bags will cut the number of throw-away bags coming out of grocery, drug and convenience stores by an estimated 70 percent or more according to the city’s analysis. It will also reduce the use of disposable shopping bags in Seattle overall by more than 50 percent. By preventing the manufacture of 184 million bags a year, Seattle will cut greenhouse gas production by nearly 112,000 tons over a 30-year period. A similar fee in Ireland achieved a 90 percent reduction in use, from 325 to 23 bags per person per year.

The proposed ban on foam containers used by the food service industry would include such items as plates, trays and hot and cold beverage cups used at restaurants, delicatessens, fast food outlets and coffee shops as well as meat trays and egg cartons used at grocery stores. The proposed legislation would require all food service businesses currently using disposable plastic or plastic-coated paper products to convert to packaging that is compostable or locally recyclable by July 1, 2010.

“Cities across the world are adopting policies to discourage throwaway plastic and plastic-coated paper products in the food service industry,” said Nickels and Conlin. “As a result, manufacturers and suppliers are responding with new products - including compostable plastics made from vegetable sources, such as corn starch and sugar cane. Over the next two years there will likely be a variety of new products on the market.”

More than 20 U.S. cities have already banned polystyrene food packaging, including Portland (OR), San Francisco, Oakland (CA), and Suffolk County (NY).

To smooth the transition, the city will set up business advisory committees representing the retail and restaurant sectors. In addition, the city will help food service businesses work together for lower prices on new compostable products.

SPU expects to collect about $10 million annually from the green fee. About $2 million will be spent to promote the switch to reusable bags, including the distribution of free bags to low income families and those on fixed incomes; remaining funds – about $8 million – will go toward waste prevention and recycling programs and environmental education programs.

The foam ban and green fee for shopping bags are just two of several elements of the city’s new waste reduction and recycling strategies, approved by the council and mayor in 2007. The overall goal is to increase Seattle’s recycling rate to 70 percent by 2025 and to reduce the amount of waste shipped to landfills by at least one percent per year over the next five years.

According to a recent study conducted by Herrera Environmental for SPU, all disposable paper and plastic bags have significant energy, climate change, wastewater, litter and water quality impacts on the region’s environment, although plastic is especially damaging to marine animals and shore birds.

The study also examined the life-cycle environmental impact of disposable shopping bags, finding that the overall impact of paper bags was four times worse than that of an equal number of plastic bags (for all categories weighted equally), and worse in every category except litter and marine litter. Banning only plastic bags but not paper would push stores and shoppers to use more paper bags, resulting in significantly greater greenhouse gas generation.

On an international level, according to Parade Magazine, a giant field of plastic trash that’s twice the size of the continental United States is currently floating in the Pacific Ocean. The man-made debris that spans from Japan to our West Coast is deeply affecting the Pacific’s ecosystems. In an effort to undo some of the damage, entire countries have now announced bans on plastic bags, including China and Australia.

For more information about the proposed initiative in Seattle, go to: http://www.seattle.gov/util/bagsandfoam. Also, visit Mayor Nickel’s web site at http://www.seattle.gov/mayor.

Nickels, the Conference’s Advisory Board Chair, has been a national leader on climate protection and founded the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement. Currently, 825 mayors are signatories to this agreement, pledging to reduce carbon emissions in their cities by seven percent below 1990 emission levels by 2012, as set forth in the Kyoto Protocol. Too see the list of signatory cities, visit the website: www.usmayors.org.