On Tuesday I just happened to be at Sea-Tac airport and glanced at the headlines on a newstand to learn that the Seattle city council the previous night had banned plastic bags. San Francisco and Portland have done it and other countries in Europe as well as China have done the same.
Seattle actually banned plastic bags and added a fee for paper bags back in 2008. The voters overturned that idea in a referendum funded by the plastic industry.
There are always pros and cons to any conversation about the bags we use to take home our consumer purchases. Recycle rates for plastic bags in Seattle are claimed at 85%. Rates for paper bags are claimed at 13% of the almost 300 million bags a year that are given away. Reusable bags, if containing nylon content or if they are a cotton/poly or poly/nylon blend, are not recyclable, but, could last for years. Carbon footprints of manufacture plus lifetime usage (do you launder the bags?) plus end of life issues are far from perfect as well.
Changing human behavior through legislation is difficult for many to accept. I don't actually have an opinion about whether banning plastic bags is a good idea, great idea, marginal idea or a bad idea. I do know that anytime we try to make anything seam simple, we always find out, usually much later, that it was not as simple as we thought. The experiment that Seattle is working toward, is an applaudable effort to provide a trial so we can all see the outcome in a few years. Now, in Seattle anyway, Chaos Theory, can start to work it's magic.
Happy Holidays - be sure to resuse the gift wrap!!
