From Stark
The Bellingham City Council appears to be ready to pass an ordinance to ban the use of plastic shopping bags at all retailers in the city.
The ordinance cleared the council’s Natural Resources committee on a 4-0 vote Monday afternoon July 11, with Chairman Seth Fleetwood and members Michael Lilliquist, Barry Buchanan and Gene Knutson voting. Two other council members in attendance, Terry Bornemann and Jack Weiss, also indicated their support for the measure.
If the council does approve it, the bag ban would take effect in one year after passage. Besides banning the use of lightweight disposable plastic shopping bags, the ordinance would also require retailers to charge customers five cents for each disposable paper bag they use.
The extra nickels are meant to help retailers cover the higher cost of the paper bags while giving shoppers an incentive to remember their reusable bags.
Under the legal procedure for adopting a new ordinance, the measure must get a second, final vote at another council meeting.
The seven-page ordinance contains a few complexities:
- Low-income people can be exempted from the nickel paper bag fee;
- A store can get a temporary exemption from the law that would be granted by the mayor, if that store can demonstrate a special hardship
- Paper bags provided to shoppers must be made from 40 percent recycled materials;
- Restaurants are still permitted to offer disposable plastic bags for take-out foods.
- Small paper bags can be offered to shoppers for small items, free of charge.
At Monday’s committee session, council member Bornemann praised Brooks Anderson and Jill MacIntyre Witt, leaders of a group called Bag It Bellingham, for proposing the ordinance and undertaking a citywide public education campaign since the ordinance was first suggested in March 2011.
As a result of their efforts, Bornemann said, the initial backlash against the proposal died away and support grew, from retailers as well as shoppers.
“You went and did the work and headed that off,” Bornemann said. “Thanks for doing it the right way.”
Anderson replied that she was aware that the ordinance would need widespread support to be successful.
“We wanted this to be about all of Bellingham,” Anderson said. “We really did work to get the buy-in.”
Knutson noted that Bellingham was a leader in moving to a citywide recycling system more than 20 years ago, and this was another example of Bellingham’s leading role on environmental issues.
The bag ordinance gained some momentum in the last few days after two local supermarket firms, Haggen Food and Pharmacy and The Markets, said they favored the ordinance.
After the meeting, Heather Trim of People for Puget Sound in Seattle said her group expects to launch a new effort to get a plastic bag ban in place in Seattle. An earlier ban that imposed a 20-cent paper bag fee that was sent to the city proved unpopular and was defeated at the polls. Trim said she thinks Bellingham’s approach could be a good model for Seattle to try.
The Bellingham measure will charge just a nickel, and the revenue goes to the retailers, not to the city.
By waiting a year to phase in the ban, Anderson said Bellingham’s law will give retailers plenty of time to use up bags they have already purchased, while giving shoppers time to adjust their expectations.
She noted that retailers have already been taking steps to encourage shoppers to carry reusable bags, because they want to eliminate the cost of providing shopping bags.
We really do live in a nutty town.
1) If I understand it correctly, I can place my veggies, and bulk food items, in a plastic bag, but I can’t put my veggies (in plastic bags) or my bulk food items (in plastic bags) in a plastic bag.
Are we trying to get rid of plastic bags or not? Somebody needs to make up their mind.
2) If I am “low income” who determines that? The checker at the checkstand?
3) Why is there an exception for the Farmer’s Market?
I’m confused.
Can somebody please answer my questions?
Next they will tell us what stores are allowed to charge for milk, bread and butter. And free samples will be illegal because of the waste that they create.
Ridiculous. Do we not have more important issues to worry about?
The all powerful, all knowing government of Bellingham needs to look after all her little children, who know not what they do, that’s us folks!
Why just stop with plastic bags, why not make it a law on how many rolls of toilet paper each person can buy every week, that would definitely do more to save the planet than just outlawing plastic bags, don’t ya know!
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
Bellingham economy is struggling and our families are hurting.
So, why would the Bellingham city council raise taxes on groceries with the price of food and gas already going up?
Why would the Bellingham city council force us to use shopping bags that may increase our risk of lead contamination or food borne illness?
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
No mention of the exemption for the Farmers Market. Did it get eliminated?
“Excessive Amounts of Lead Found in Reusable Grocery Bags Supplied by Major Retailers, New Testing Shows Bans and Fees on Paper and Plastic Bags Have Unintended Consequences for Consumers Switching to Reusable Bags….
http://www.consumerfreedom.com/downloads/ccf_bag_report.pdf
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
“U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer today called on the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) to investigate and ban reusable shopping bags that contain higher than acceptable levels of lead…
http://schumer.senate.gov/new_website/record.cfm?id=328640&&year=2010&
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
“The test findings clearly support concerns that reusable grocery bags can become an
active microbial habitat and a breeding ground for bacteria, yeast, mold and
coliforms. This is supported by the high bacterial counts showing that the bag surface
(interior) can harbour or breed substantial bacterial populations…..
http://www.plastics.ca/_files/file.php?fileid=0&filename=file_A_Microbiological_Study_of_Reusable_Grocery_Bags_May20_09.pdf
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
“Storing reusable bags in a hot car trunk—which many people do so they don’t forget them at home—causes the bacteria to grow 10 times faster….
http://uanews.org/pdfs/GerbaWilliamsSinclair_BagContamination.pdf
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
It’s about time. For all you haters out there, I get the feeling you reflexively hate anything that ‘the left’ is in favor of. This is about getting rid of unnecessary waste, not about the other side getting a win. It is about keeping our part of the country beautiful, not taking away your liberties. You do not have a God given nor a Consitutional right to a free piece of plastic that will become garbage in less than 20 minutes.
I use the plastic grocery bags to line small waste bins, so they aren’t just useless garbage to me. I know other people who do this as well. Guess we’ll have to start buying plastic garbage bags now.
By the way, why should a poor person get off the hook on this? The stores can give them reuseable bags and then they can have the same responsibility as everyone else.
I’ll be buying my groceries out in the county, thank you very much. This is CRAZY.
If any of these “Bag it Bellingham” people get hired on to the City as “consultants” or as “experts” at taxpayer expense then I will seriously get annoyed.
Project GreenBag is the sustainable, eco-friendly alternative to plastic bags. 100% organic cotton, biodegradable, affordable, and made in San Francisco California.
http://www.ProjectGreenBag.com
http://www.facebook.com/ProjectGreenBag
http://twitter.com/projectgreenbag
This really blindsided me. I read in the Herald on Monday that it was going to be passed in committee on Monday but thought it said it hadn’t been scheduled for the regular city council agenda yet. I thought I would have an opportunity to speak to the lunacy of this. When did this vote get added to the agenda of the city council?
Also Knutson is crazy to compare this effort to the recycling effort. Recycling isn’t enforced (yet, hopefully I didn’t give this council any ideas) but was an added service. More choice is good, this bill is stereotypical progressive in that it makes takes away choice/freedom and adds stringent new requirements that has all sorts of unusual and hard to enforce edge cases.
I respect Haggen’s decision to determine what business practices work best for them.
What I do NOT respect is their effort in forcing this decision on other businesses and consumers by supporting government regulation.
Since they want to remove choice not just in Bellingham, but in the county and across the state, we may not get to decide between paper or plastic much longer. However, there is still a choice on where to buy groceries, and I will support the businesses that don’t promote nannyism.
What’s wrong about the regulation? http://youtu.be/mokcx-fNohg