Yes, Seattle enacted a $0.20 tax on all grocery bags last week. Yes, they called it an “environmental fee”. No, I don’t really care. Yes, I live in Tacoma.
You see, in the utopia that is supposed to Seattle, no one goes grocery shopping only once a week. They go every day or every other day. This way the owning of a couple of the preferred stupid little canvas bags actually works.
Wait until the ban on the little foam plates and saran wrap the meat products come in get banned. And then they’ll ban the butcher paper wrappings so no one can buy meat. And then everyone in utopia Seattle will be vegetables. I mean, vegetarians.
But back to the bags. Tolerant Seattle and their intolerance for paper bags, which are recyclable, and the plastic bags, which are biodegradable in sunlight, is merely hilarious for those of us who know not to live near crazy, full of itself government and the people who elect them. Personally, I’m encouraging all those who live outside the city limits to give me their plastic bags so that I can drop them out my truck window in the dark of night when I drive through town on my way to work.
My wife and I go shopping once a week and usually come home with 12-14 bags. In Seattle, that would be $2.40- $2.80 per trip extra, equals nearly $125 – $146 per year extra. Or we can spend $75 once to buy 15 canvas bags (provided that they’re only $5 each).
Oooh, that’s half price, right there. Or, since the wife and work outside of Seattle (even when we lived in Seattle) I can shop outside the city of Seattle, in Shoreline, Renton, Burien, Seatac, Tukwila or even Mercer Island, and not pay anything for my plastic bags.
The eco-socialists are always whining about how, because of our state sales tax, the poor are paying “more than their fare share” of the taxes. Oddly, when you point this new tax out, they say that this isn’t a whole lot extra.
The green fee is expected to generate $10 million, $2 million of which would go toward distributing reusable shopping bags, promoting them, and for other waste-prevention and environmental-education efforts.
That is a whole lot of “not a lot extra” right there.
The other $8 Million is going to me. Well, not all of it. Christalmighty, I would possibly be able to afford to live in Seattle again then. No, the other millions are going to pay for part of the new garbage contract.
The new 2009-2019 contract requires the fleet to be up to 2008 emissions standards and to run on either bio-diesel or CNG. Guess what, we don’t currently meet those specs and are in the process of buying and fitting 50 new trucks by summer and another 50 new trucks by January 2009. At $200,000 per truck, that is a lot of money, honey.
The rest of the money will come from an increase in the collection rates.
Remember: trash, recycle and yardwaste/foodwaste collection is mandatory in Seattle and comes with fines if your trash has recyclables or food waste in it. Basically, your can gets smaller and your bill gets bigger.
Oh, and the rats are lovin’ your non-lockable bins.
So, picture me laughing my ass off. I just got a raise and the utopian Seattle resident didn’t. Unless you count the raise in their food bill and their garbage bill.
One of the reasons I chose this job over the other two offers I had at the time is that there will always be garbage and someone will always be willing to pay to have someone pick it up.
IKEA has these new reusable plasti-canvas bags that are the same size as a paper grocery bag, with handles, and run like $2. These aren’t the plasti-canvas shopping bags you can grab in the store (the huge yellow and blue ones), but are meant to replace paper sacks.
Of course, I like paper sacks in order to keep my recyclable paper separate, and I like plastic sacks for cleaning up after dogs and cats.
This is a case of the grocery retailers getting caught flat-footed, and not being able to mount an effective campaign in time against this stupidity.
Here’s a few suggestions to RF this idiocy.
1. Buy a bale of paper bags and take them into the store with you, and loudly and visibly proclaim to everyone within earshot of your checkout line that the “Seattle Bag Party” has begun to protest the tax.
2. Ask for cardboard boxes to carry out your groceries in. The management will probably go along with that request.
3. If you use the “smart” bags, make sure they’re from another store, and when you get a dirty look from the cashier, just tell her that it’s the City’s fault she has to put Safeway food in a Fred Meyer bag.
4. Go bagless. Tell then if you can’t have a free PAPER bag, you don’t want any bag at all and you will just push your cart home.
You see, in the Soviet Republik of Oregon, we are going to get this bulltwaddle soon, but guess what? Our recycler has us putting stuff in PAPER BAGS before putting it into the “one-cart” recycler. If one enviro whacko is REQUIRING paper bags, how can other envirowhackos be trying to tax them out of existence?
Rivrdog,
That’s just part of the wonderful DIVERSITY of views among environmentalists, you see.