Seattle is in on the verge of being the first city in the nation to ban plastic bags. A second proposal on the table would ban expanded polystyrene (EPS) containers in restaurants, fast food outlets, coffee shops and all other food service establishments. This blog has been following this story for awhile, with great interest. There was another public hearing on the subject earlier this week, we'll post the results as soon as we can. Meantime, some background
What are Mayor Greg Nickels and City Council President Richard Conlin proposing?
Mayor Greg Nickels and City Council President Richard Conlin are proposing a 20 cent green fee on all disposable shopping bags provided to customers at grocery, drug and convenience stores. The purpose of the green fee is to discourage the use of disposable bags of any type and encourage shoppers to use reusable bags.
Nickels and Conlin are also proposing a ban on the use of expanded polystyrene (EPS) containers in restaurants, fast food outlets, coffee shops and all other food service establishments. This includes some of the packaging used at grocery stores such as meat trays and egg cartons.
In addition, because there are a number of different kinds of plastics and plastic-coated paper products used for disposable food service ware — "clamshells," plates, cups, utensils and so forth.
When will these changes take effect?
Both the green fee on disposable shopping bags and the ban on expanded polystyrene food service ware will take effect Jan. 1, 2009. Mandatory conversion of other food service ware to compostable and recyclable alternatives would be scheduled for July 1, 2010.
Has any place else used a similar approach to cutting disposable shopping bag use?
The closest example is Ireland where a tax on all disposable plastic shopping bags reduced their use by about 90 percent. The tax is currently 33 cents U.S. per plastic bag. In a recent test in Northern Ireland, the British food and clothing chain Marks and Spencer voluntarily began charging customers for disposable bags and bag use dropped 66 percent.
Most U.S. jurisdictions, notably San Francisco, have dealt with the bag litter problem by banning disposable plastic bags. This shift to paper actually increases adverse environmental impacts. Initially, San Francisco was planning an advanced recovery fee on disposable plastic bags but the grocery and plastics industries combined to pass a state law prohibiting cities from doing that. San Francisco was left with no option except a ban on plastic shopping bags. Officials there consider it a second-best choice.
How many bags does Seattle currently use? Where do they end up when people are done with them?
Figures from Seattle Public Utilities waste composition studies show that Seattleites still use approximately 292 million plastic and 68 million paper disposable shopping bags per year. This 360 million bag per-year total, adjusted for differences in population, is close to estimates of use in San Francisco, Ireland and Los Angeles County.
In Seattle, plastic bag use is estimated at about 485 plastic and 110 paper bags per person per year. A state litter study conducted in 2004 found that paper one-time take out food containers made up 1.6 percent of the total litter collected, plastic one-time take out food containers made up 0.9 percent; paper bags were1.7 percent, and plastic bags and film totaled 2.9 percent (Department of Ecology 2005). Both paper and plastic bags are recyclable in Seattle’s curbside system. Recovery of paper bags is estimated at 82 percent, of plastic only 13 percent, not very good but still lots higher than the national average of about 3 percent.
Recycled brown (kraft) paper bags sorted from the stream of recyclables at the Allied Waste processing facility in SODO are often made into cardboard. Some bags pass through and end up in the bales of mixed paper which is commonly made into the middle layer of corrugated cardboard, newsprint, or paperboard, typically the gray paper liner in cereal and cracker boxes.
Some of the plastic film recycled here, including plastic bags, is made into plastic lumber or wood-plastic composite lumber (commonly used for decking), pipe, garden edging, or shipping corner boards. Other plastic film is shipped to Asia where it is made into a number of consumer products, component parts or black bags.
Why is a green fee being used?
Green, or advanced recovery fees are not new. For example, here in Washington, they are charged on vehicle batteries and tires. Currently, Californians pay an advanced recovery fee when they buy computers or other electronics, allowing them to turn the products in for recycling later at no charge. Applied to disposable shopping bags, the idea behind the green fee is to discourage the use of particular one-time, throw away products, promote the use of reusable alternatives and provide some funding for recycling the remaining number of bags and other recycling programs. Advance recovery fees are sometimes called "environmental fees" or "impact fees."
How will the green fee work?
The green fee of 20 cents for each disposable shopping bag will be added to shoppers’ bills at grocery, drug and convenience stores when they check out and it will show on the receipts they get. When they bring their own bags, there will be no charge. Stores will keep track of the number of bags for which the green fee is collected and — most likely quarterly — remit a portion of the fees to the City, keeping 25 percent to cover their own costs. Small stores with revenues of less than $1 million per year will be required to collect the disposable bag fee but may keep all of the revenue to offset their costs.
Why not just ban plastic shopping bags?
Seattle Public Utilities’ study which examined the life cycle environmental impact of disposable shopping bags found that the impact of paper bags was overall four times worse than that for an equal number of plastic bags (for all environmental impact categories weighted equally) and worse in every category except litter and marine litter. Banning plastic bags only would push stores and shoppers to paper bags, resulting in significantly greater greenhouse gas generation.
The manufacturing process for pulp and paper mills are also large sources of air pollutants, such as CO2, nitrous oxides, sulfur dioxides, carbon monoxides, and particulates. The pollutants contribute to global warming, as well as ozone, acid rain, and respiratory problems.
What is the expected reduction in disposable grocery bag usage?
Seattle Public Utilities estimates that a green fee of 20 cents per bag will cut the number of disposable bags distributed by participating stores by 70 percent or more. A similar fee in Ireland achieved a 90 percent reduction in use from 325 to 23 bags per person per year.
How was the amount of the green fee chosen?
The residential polling Seattle Public Utilities conducted indicated that 10 cents was not high enough to really get shoppers’ attention. Most importantly, though, a 20 cent green fee will produce real reduction in disposable bag use of 70 percent at the stores where it’s charged and more than 50 percent overall, which is the kind of target for reduced environmental impact and less greenhouse gas production that Seattle residents would like to see.
How will the City of Seattle use the green fee revenues?
Total City revenue from the green fee is expected to be about $10 million annually with bag use down by about 70 percent at participating stores and 50 percent overall. Seattle Public Utilities (SPU) expects collection and enforcement costs to be about $750,000 per year. Additionally, during ramp up and the first year of the program, SPU expects to spend about $1.5 million in cooperation with merchants to promote the switch to reusable shopping bags, including underwriting free reusable bag distribution. This will particularly help low-income families and those on a fixed-income. 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.
Are there any exceptions to the green fee on disposable bags?
Yes, bags of whatever material used inside stores by customers to contain bulk items such as fruits and vegetables, potentially wet products such as frozen foods and meat, nuts, grains, candies or baked goods and other prepared foods will be exempt. Bags for bulk materials such as nails, screws, bolts and nuts used inside the store at hardware and lumber stores will also be exempt, as will laundry-dry cleaner bags and newspaper bags. These bags are recyclable in Seattle’s recycling program.
Why not charge the businesses who give these bags out instead?
It’s the shopper who makes the decision to use or "consume" a disposable bag. The green fee is meant as a reminder that reusable bags are the better environmental choice.
How much will the green fee cost a typical Seattle resident?
Possibly nothing if all the family members regularly take reusable bags with them when they go shopping. In reality, some of the time people will forget and they’ll pay a small amount. If a family’s bag use drops from several hundred now to a few dozen next year when the green fee is in effect, it might be $10.
Expanded Polystyrene (EPS) Foam Food Container Ban
Why ban so-called "Styrofoam" containers and cups? Aren’t other plastics just as bad?
Along with expanded polystyrene (EPS), all the other disposable plastic and plastic-coated paper products in fast food and take-out use have various negative impacts on the environment. None stand out as particularly better or worse than others, except that EPS has proven to be an exceptional problem in litter and particularly marine litter. That’s why a ban is the right way to deal with EPS now.
The superiority of compostable and truly recyclable plastic products to the disposable plastic and plastic-coated paper products currently in use is why Nickels and Conlin have set a date two years from now for all food service outlets to switch to compostable and recyclable containers, plates, hot and cold beverage cups and utensils.
Have any other jurisdictions banned EPS foam food containers. How is it working?
Portland, Oregon, was among the first to ban EPS foam food containers a decade ago. McDonald’s sued the city and lost and that in part that led to the burger chain’s switch to a cardboard container (sometimes plastic coated), a pretty impressive result for municipal government action. More recently, a number of California cities and counties including San Francisco have banned EPS in food service and are promoting compostable or recyclable alternatives.
Aren’t the alternatives to EPS foam containers just as bad for the environment?
Switching from EPS to other disposable plastics can be just as bad and sometimes worse in environmental impact. That’s why Nickels’ and Conlin’s plan takes a second step and mandates that restaurants find compostable and recyclable alternatives to food service disposable plastic and plastic-coated paper products by July 1, 2010.
Are there compostable and recyclable alternatives to EPS foam and the other disposable plastics used in food service?
Because more and more jurisdictions here on the West Coast and worldwide are adopting policies to discourage throwaway plastic and plastic-coated paper products in the food service industry, manufacturers and suppliers are responding with new products including compostable plastics made from vegetable sources such as corn starch and sugar cane. These products are currently being developed and tested by the market for how well they do their job in the restaurant and for compostability after use. Change is coming fast so over the next two years there will be a variety of new products for restaurants and coffee shops, delis and so forth to choose from.
Your study shows that banning EPS food containers and cups is actually worse for the environment than doing nothing so why do it?
The study which was completed last year assumes that most short-term changes from EPS products will be to other difficult-to-recycle, non-compostable plastics, so the environmental impact may indeed be higher for a while. That’s why Mayor Nickels and Council President Conlin propose a complete conversion from those kinds of products to compostable and recyclable replacements by July 1, 2010. More compostable products are coming onto the market now and conversion may be much quicker expected
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