Congratulations, Seattle!

I reported a couple of weeks ago on Seattle’s interest in a disposable bag tariff, and now The battle for the city’s fate is over: yesterday a plastic 20-cent bag tax proposal finally came before Seattle’s City Council as a vote, and it almost-unanimously passed.

Seattle is taking a different approach to the “paper or plastic” debate; instead of banning plastic shopping bags, the Seattle City Council on Monday approved a 20-cent charge for consumers who want to bring home a disposable paper or plastic shopping bag from convenience, drug and grocery stores.

The proposal passed by a vote of 6-1, with Councilwoman Jan Drago casting the lone dissenting vote.

“The answer to the question ‘paper or plastic?’ has officially become ‘neither’,” Mayor Greg Nickels said in a statement. “The best way to reduce waste is not to create it, and today, we have made that a little easier in Seattle.”

The tariff, inspired by Ireland’s legendary bag tax success, will go into effect in January. Prior to that, council officials have plans to hand out at least one free reusable shopping back to every household in city. One thing the council was unanimous on, however, was a proposal — also passed — to ban plastic foam take-out containers, which will also go into effect at the start of next year. A similar ban, on styrofoam meat and seafood trays at supermarkets, will go into effect in 2010.

How effective will all of this be? Extremely effective, hopefully, and if the countries already enforcing this sort of tax are any indication. In the meantime, congratulations Seattle for having the courage to go through with it and start setting some nationwide standards.

Tuesday, July 29th, 2008 at 10:14 am and is filed under The Daily. 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.