Seattle City council approves bag fee. But do they get $3.5 million or $10 million in "green" and where does it go?

It's official. Seattle shoppers will pay 20 cents for every paper and plastic bag used at grocery, drug and convenience stores starting in January 2009, the City Council decided Monday. This fee applies for each disposable bag, whether it's paper or plastic. But there's more than one kind of "green" to this story!

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First, here's the Official City of Seattle Press Release.

SEATTLE – Mayor Greg Nickels applauded the City Council today for passing a 20-cent “green fee” on all disposable shopping bags at the city’s grocery, drug and convenience stores, effective Jan. 1, 2009. The plan also calls for a ban on foam food containers.

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

Seattle Public Utilities estimates 360 million disposable bags are used in the city every year, most made of plastic. The green fee is intended to encourage and promote the use of reusable shopping bags. The city will distribute these bags and promote their advantages to every household in Seattle, with additional bags going to low-income families. Retailers will keep 5-cents of every disposable bag sold 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, and will reduce the use of disposable shopping bags in Seattle overall by more than 50 percent. From www.seattle.gov/mayor.

While other U.S. cities have banned plastic bags, Seattle is believed to be the first to discourage use by charging a fee. It has been widely reported (including by the Seattle Times) that the city expects the 20-cent-per-bag "green fee" to raise about $3.5 million each year with Seattle Public Utilities using about $500,000 to run the program. The remainder will be used to offset expected increases in the city's solid-waste rates.

However a visit to the City's website provides a different financial picture. Subsectioned "How will the City of Seattle use the green fee revenues? " it states "Total City revenue from the green fee is expected to be about $10 million annually. Seattle Public Utilities (SPU) expects collection and enforcement costs to be about $750,000 per year. The rest of the money, approximately $8 million, will go to support and beef up waste prevention and recycling programs and environmental education programs already in the budget or planned for coming years. This revenue will help keep 2009–2010 solid waste rates 5 percent or more lower than otherwise projected. More graffiti removal and more public place recycling are additions to existing programs that could be funded with the green fee revenue.

The difference between $3.5 million and $8 million is a pretty big number.

Is this due to a phase in from plastic bags only to including foam? How could this be since foam is only a ban, not a fee? Have these numbers been revised? And since this, in essence a tax, how much "green" are we really talking about here and what accountability does the city have to show how the money is being spent?

These are important questions as this project now moves forward.