At the urging of the local environmental community, the Seattle City Council is considering a ban on plastic shopping bags based on a ban approved this year in Bellingham.
No ordinance has been introduced yet, but council members have been reaching out to grocers, retailers and even the city’s food banks to gain support and avoid some of the controversies that doomed a 2008 city effort to charge a 20-cent fee for paper and plastic bags.
What’s changed over the past three years? Environmentalists say the evidence is stronger than ever that the plastic checkout bags clog landfills, strangle shorebirds and marine life, and break down into smaller and smaller bits without ever decomposing.
"This is about Puget Sound wildlife and the harmful effects of plastic bags in the environment," said Dan Kohler, regional director of Environment Washington, which has joined forces with People for Puget Sound, the Sierra Club and the Surfrider Foundation in calling on Seattle to ban plastic bags.
The City Council enacted a 20-cent fee on both paper and plastic bags in 2008, but voters rejected it a year later, and it never went into effect. Critics complained, among other things, that it was an example of a "nanny state" telling residents what was good for them.
Bellingham’s ordinance, in contrast, was passed by its City Council in July with the support of local grocers and widespread buy-in from residents. It takes effect next year.
"A large part of the work in Bellingham was answering questions raised by Seattle’s experience and trying to create an ordinance that worked better," said Heather Trim, policy director for People for Puget Sound.
Seattle City Council President Richard Conlin said Bellingham’s ordinance seems to enjoy more widespread support in part because it is less complicated than the one passed by the Seattle City Council. In addition to banning plastic bags, it charges a 5-cent fee for paper bags that goes to stores to reimburse them for the costs.
The Seattle ordinance directed much of the 20-cent fee back to the city for education and recycling efforts, but was seen by some as a tax to fund a new government bureaucracy. And if the goal was to eliminate plastic bags, why not ban them altogether?
"We’re looking at the models adopted by other cities. They’re simpler, the money goes to the store and not the city, and they’ve been more successful," Conlin said.
The Seattle ordinance didn’t die only of its own weight.
After the ordinance was adopted in 2008, the American Chemistry Council, the lobbying arm of the plastics industry, paid signature gatherers to qualify a referendum for the August 2009 primary. The group then poured $1.4 million into a campaign to defeat the bag fee.
Among the plastic industry’s successful messages was that the 20-cent charge disproportionately impacted low-income people and the patrons of food banks, who might not have ready access to reusable bags.
The Bellingham ordinance exempts low-income recipients of government food-assistance programs; it exempts charitable organizations such as food banks; it includes all retail stores, not just grocery, convenience and drugstores; it allows restaurants to offer plastic carryout bags; and it allows the use of plastic bags in the produce, bulk foods and meat sections of grocery stores.
Stephen Trinkaus, owner of Terra Organics, a small Bellingham natural-foods store, said a grass-roots organizing effort around the issue of plastic bags and pollution, coupled with support from two of the city’s largest grocery chains, were key to winning approval of the ordinance.
"They (the grocers ) said this would save them money on the cost of bags. It’s a big cost for grocery stores," Trinkaus said.
Environmental advocates are urging Seattle to adopt the Bellingham ordinance as a way to promote consistent regulations. "Grocers are concerned about having to respond to a patchwork of ordinances across the state," Trim said. "Enacting the same ordinance means, if you’re Safeway, you have the same operations throughout Washington."
Edmonds adopted Washington state’s first plastic-bag ban in July 2009. It took effect the following year.
Both Oregon and California have considered statewide plastic-bag bans, but the plastics lobby has helped kill those bills, according to news accounts.
A plastic-bag ban in Portland that applies only to major grocery chains and some big-box retailers went into effect Oct. 15.
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