Civil disagreements with Lynne Varner and Bruce Ramsey, members of the Seattle Times editorial board is a weekly feature of the Ed Cetera blog. Bruce and Lynne often disagree on major issues--and Seattle's bag fee is no exception.

Lynne Varner, left, and Bruce Ramsey

Lynne Varner: Bruce: You are a big traveler having just returned from Cuba and venturing to other exotic locales in the past; have you ever noticed that in other countries people bring bags to the market? It is likely cheaper for the businesses and convenient for the shoppers, but in Seattle the option is an environmentally sound imperative.

Those who cannot be bothered to bring along a canvas bag ought to pay the fee proposed on the Aug. 18 primary ballot. It is one of the biggest issues of the campaign season. Makers of plastic bags have weighed in with that most persuasive of arguments: money.

This story and the more than 200 commenters offers an important look at how this issue is viewed.
Plastic bags are a threat to Puget Sound, which we're spending millions to clean up and to ocean life. For most consumers, the bags come from the grocery stores to pile up in our homes. A reusable product makes better sense. At some point, we all ought to shop with our own containers to carry our purchases. We'll reach this point sooner or later when our landfills are filled and our oceans contaminated with plastics and other non-biodegradable products.

Bruce Ramsey: Lynne, this issue is really simple. Bags are free. Why should I agree to a law forcing merchants to charge me 20 cents for a bag they give me for free? Free is good. I like free.

Don’t tell me that I’m paying for the bags in the cost of groceries. I suppose I am, but it’s way less than 20 cents. The 20 cent figure was chosen not as a cost but as a penalty--a penalty on me. And I don't want a penalty on me.

Three reasons are commonly given for this self-flagellation. The first applies only to plastic bags, though the tax applies to paper bags, too. It is that plastic bags get into the ocean, and are part of a parking lot of plastic garbage in the middle of the Pacific. But where is the evidence that this problem comes from here? The bags would have to get into Puget Sound and travel out through the Strait of Juan de Fuca and take a trip down toward Hawaii. Nobody has shown that this happens.

I have camped on the Washington coast for many years, and have seen a fair amount of plastic on the beach. I have made fires of the stuff to get rid of it. And it appears to be all from boats: plastic rope from fishing boats and plastic containers such as dish detergent, often labeled in Japanese or Korean, thrown overboard as garbage from freighters. There, I suggest, is the biggest source of the ocean garbage problem, at least from here.

The second reason people give is that plastic bags stay in landfills. They do, but there is plenty of landfill space and plastic bags account for less than 1%, by weight, of the stuff in the landfills, because each bag has so little material in it. If you’re concerned about landfills, take on something that makes a big difference, like demolition waste.

The third reason cited is that plastic bags are a part, or maybe a symbol, of a consumerist, throwaway lifestyle, and that such way of living is wicked, shameful and wrong. Well, maybe it is and maybe it ain’t, but regarding lifestyles it’s a free country. At least, I thought it was. What is amazing is all these “progressives” who would go to the mat for my right to be wicked and shameful sexually want to deny me a free sack at a 7-Eleven store. What is the matter with them? I think they should lighten up.