14 DAY TRIAL // Seattle is now the fourth eco-friendly city in the state that has decided to adopt and implement a plastic bag ban and a 5% fee on paper bags.
This initiative has been launched in an attempt to reduce environmental pollution, by determining clients to consider reusable shopping bags a viable, greener option, the New York Times informs.
Seattle officials are now eager to follow the same path drawn up by San Francisco, Washington and Portland. Apparently, paper bags are still tolerated because Seattle has a high paper recycling rate of up to 85%.
It seems that the situation is quite different when it comes to plastic bag recycling operations, since the city only succeeds in taking care of 13% of the 292 million no-longer-needed plastic items available all across the city.
All in all, officials think the newly-announced ban and the fee on paper are two elements strong enough to trigger the expected changes.
These two measures are even supported by most of the retailer stores and a large segment of buyers. It doesn't come as a surprise that major players operating in the plastic industry do not share the same opinion.
Mark Daniels from Hilex Poly, a plastics maker and recycler, stated that this project was based on “badly misguided efforts,” and would make consumers take less friendly alternatives to plastic bags into consideration, like paper bags requiring an extra amount of energy for their manufacturing process and distribution and reusable shopping bags that cannot be recycled.
This is not the first time when the City Council is putting together a plan to curb the amount of packaging waste.
Three years ago, authorities approved a fee for both paper and plastic bags, trying to make people pay 20 cents for every bag bought in a store. The plastic industry spent $1.4 (€1.075) to boycott the strategy and finally the Seattle voters decided to dismiss the proposed measure.