FoS endorses a "YES" vote on Referendum 1.

Rather than build an expensive new transfer in Georgetown to handle the growing volume of trash generated in Seattle, the City of Seattle adopted a "Zero Waste Strategy" centered on reducing waste. As part of that strategy, the City Council adopted a 20-cent "green fee" for disposable shopping bags. Opponents of the fee successfully gathered enough signatures to put the Council's ordinance to a public vote.

Discuss the Green Bag Fee in the Member Forums.

YES campaign

• official campaign website
• campaign-disclosure reports with the Seattle Ethics & Elections Commission

NO campaign

• official campaign website
• campaign-disclosure reports with the Seattle Ethics & Elections Commission

NOTE: According to news reports, the plastic industry has been funded---with over $500,000---the "no" campaign.

Analysis

Friends of Seattle endorses the green bag fee as a step towards making Seattle a more environmentally sustainable city by reducing waste, greenhouse gases, and other negative environmental impacts.

What strikes us about the green bag fee is its likelihood of success in reducing paper and plastic bag consumption (and thus the path of bags to our landfills): charging a small fee for disposable bags is a proven method of getting the majority of shoppers to bring reusable bags. The fee is modeled after a similar law in Ireland which reduced the use of disposable bags by 90% within the first month.

Disposable plastic bags inarguably have a negative impact on the environment: they use up nonrenewable resources, they make their way into natural habitats where they injure wildlife, they carry toxic contaminants which end up in commercial compost, and they clog storm drains as well as recycling machines.

In addition to wanting to make Seattle a dynamic urban center with a small environmental footprint, Friends of Seattle stands for a city that's socially just. We evaluated the green bag fee's impact on the low-income population (a definite concern for some members of our endorsement committee), and we believe it is socially just. We were glad to learn that the fee will raise funds toward a city program providing free reusable bags to low-income individuals (as well as to recycling and solid waste programs and education efforts around reusable bag use). We were even more encouraged by the longer-term benefit to low-income families: the green bag fee is a part of the city's Zero Waste Strategy. By focusing on waste reduction, Seattle Public Utilities can avoid raising rates as they move toward building new capital projects (such as a Georgetown transfer station) to handle a growing number of customers.

The City Council was right when they passed the ordinance in 2008. Friends of Seattle stands behind the Council's bold position against the oil and plastics industries, and we stand for the environmental benefits to our city by voting Yes on Referendum 1 in support of the green bag fee.

Ballot Language of Referendum 1

From King County Elections:

The Seattle City Council passed Ordinance No. 122752 concerning imposing a 20-cent fee on disposable shopping bags. A sufficient number of voters signed a petition to refer the ordinance to a public vote. This ordinance would require grocery, drug and convenience stores to collect the fee for every disposable shopping bag provided to customers. Stores with annual gross sales of under $1,000,000 could keep all of the fees they collected, to cover their costs. Other stores could keep 25% of the fees they collected, and would send the remainder to the City to support garbage reduction and recycling programs. The stores would get a business-tax deduction for the fees they collected. Should this ordinance be:

APPROVED

REJECTED