Times: Seattle council may ban plastic bags
Plastic grocery bags are number 2 recyclable and can be re-used over and over. making them and transporting them causes less greenhouse gasses than paper. Landfills are made to be dry. That is why you can find newspapers from 50 years ago or more that are dry and readable and chicken bones with meat still on them, etc. So don’t blame it on plastic grocery bags. I have and have seen bags for sale in stores that are made from plastic grocery bags. There are a lot of other things that are made out of plastic grocery bags and a ton of different ways they can be reused. Or you can find a plastic bag recycling bin. the recycler at my building recycles plastic grocery bags, he wants them all stuffed into one bag and tied together. this whole carry around bags for shopping is dumb. you don’t always have one with you and you can’t glue one to your hip, not to mention they get nasty real fast. And they are getting expensive…especially the ones made of plastic!
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Excellent point FreedomFrank! the City of Seattle contracts with Clean Scape for their garbage because it was good for the enviorment. it ended up putting more green trash bags into the dumps! not to mention the bags are not cheap! your garbage must be in there bags or no pickup. Go figure!
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Edmonds has a ban on plastic bags. But go to any grocery store and in the produce section there are plastic bags available, and people put a onion in a plastic bag, carrots goes into another plastic bag and so on, but when you check out, the cashier takes all those plastic bags with produce and put them all in a paper bag!Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense!
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Soooooooooo you can’t bag your groceries in a "free" plastic bag but you can buy plastic bags to put your garbage in? Whats wrong with this picture? I use these "free" plastic bags to bag my garbage in thus eliminating me having to support garbage bags. I’m sure lots of people do this,, why can’t WE decide?? We don’t need the government telling us we can’t have plastic bags!!!!!!
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While some of you are correct, that this issue probably should not be at the top of the City’s priorities, that doesn’t make it a bad move. Nickc, so x number of plastic bags cost $2,000….how much does the same number of paper bags cost? Probably more, so the economics of the issue is much more complex than your $48K/yr ‘savings’. Nevertheless, bags should be banned on environmental reasons alone. So should styrofoam. Fast food styro (cups & plates/containers) and styro packing ESPECIALLY should immediately banned. That garbage NEVER goes away, and is a blight on the landscape everywhere!
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How about putting more effort into recycling the plastic bags??? I often have to go on a hunt to find a place that’ll take them, and when you do find one it’s just crammed full – I think more folks would recycle them if there were more places to do so!
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Shaniqua I agree with you bout the economy and them worrying about plastic bags over the economy, but if this passes and is up held, it has the potitional to make the econemy better, because stores would no longer have to or be able to cary plastic bags. I work in a grocery store and I asked one time how muuch bags cost, and I think it was somethiig like $2000 dollers an order, and we tend to order at least twice a month, more during busy times. So that’s $4000 a month, $48000 a year minumum! That’s a huge cost, and that potitional savings can be used to creat jobs and or reduce by a ferly big amount how much you pay at checkout.
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