Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Seattle Rejects 20-cent Disposable Bag Fee

By a margin of 58% to 42%, with more than half the votes from Tuesday's election counted, Seattle voters rejected the 20-cent per grocery bag fee.

Environmentalists want to know: If not in Seattle, where?

Maybe a smaller fee -- 3 cents, 5 cents -- would have been accepted by the public.

2 comments:

Parliament Shill said...

Grocery stores in my city started introducing these earlier in the year. People grumbled a great deal about it but then grew accustomed to it pretty much overnight. I haven't heard any complaints lately. That doesn't help much with overcoming the initial opposition, mind you - just goes to show that the sky doesn't fall afterwards.

For comparison's sake, our fee was 5 cents.

Arun Sinha said...

That's usually how it goes. Initial resistance followed by acceptance. Maybe if Seattle had opted for 5 cents per bag, like your city, the referendum would have passed.

Well, Seattle missed a great opportunity. It may not come again for a long time.

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