Referendum 1: Vote to eliminate disposable grocery bags

FORTY years after the first Earth Day, Seattle still throws away 360 million grocery bags each year. That's an average of 600 bags per person in the Emerald-green city

Obviously, this is not the most significant, or most complicated, environmental threat facing the world. That's precisely why it should have been solved 39 years ago, and why voting "yes" on Referendum 1 is such a no-brainer today.

At one time, the two of us reused grocery bags as garbage bags and for pet poop, but no longer. We've eliminated most of our garbage and recycle or compost the rest. We pick up dog poop with the smaller plastic bags that stores will still make available free to wrap wet produce and frozen foods.

No technological breakthrough is needed to eliminate disposable grocery bags. The only obstacle is a lack of customer motivation.

To motivate people, the City Council voted 6-1 to impose a 20-cent fee on disposable grocery, drug, superstore and convenience-store carry-home bags, and the mayor enthusiastically signed the ordinance.

Then the garbage hit the fan.

The American Chemistry Council (ACC), formerly known by the more-transparent name of the "Chemical Manufacturers Association," does not (to state it gently) share Seattle's environmental ethic. The reason is obvious: Nothing spells profits like the adjective "disposable." The chemical manufacturers have already spent more than $1 million to overturn Seattle's grocery-bag law.

The petrochemical industry's profits, in this case, are our litter. Plastic bags clutter the streets, alleys and storm drains.

Worse, the bags break down into smaller and smaller bits that float downstream into Puget Sound and eventually into the ocean. In the North Pacific gyre, plastic waste from the Pacific Rim has accumulated in a soupy, floating island that's bigger than Texas.

Birds, turtles, whales and fish eat whole bags or these plastic bits because they look like food. Because the plastic stays in their stomachs filling up space, countless millions of animals are slowly starving.

More perniciously, plastics in the environment act like sponges, attracting and absorbing toxins. So plastics not only displace real food for fish and birds; they also provide a dose of poison.

Paper grocery bags also have a significant environmental "footprint." Although trees are renewable, even the most gilt-edged, FSC-certified logging has very significant impacts. Trees are not something to be wasted. Moreover, pulp and paper mills still release highly toxic chemicals, and more energy is required to manufacture and transport paper than plastic bags.

Exxon, Chevron, DuPont and their fellow behemoths in the ACC profess concern in their campaign ads that the 20-cent fee will harm poor people. That claim is utter rubbish. Much of the fee revenue will be used to provide free reusable bags to poor people, and anyone who uses reusable bags will pay no fees.

The ACC says disposability is a nonissue because plastic bags can be "recycled." Again, pure propaganda. An analysis by Plastics News concluded that the U.S. plastic-bag recycling rate is only 2 percent. The few plastic bags that are recycled are not trucked down the street to be made into new plastic bags. They are baled and shipped to Asia to be made into lower-grade products, generally in factories with few or no environmental controls on toxic emissions.

In short, disposable grocery bags are spherically senseless: they don't make sense no matter how you look at them.

Each bag may seem like a small thing, but 360 million bags per year in Seattle is 360 million too many.

That is why we will vote "yes" on Referendum 1.