Posted on 08/12/2008 9:32:58 AM PDT by Clint Williams
Update: Jan Gee of the Washington Food Industry says a Web site with more information on the effort to repeal the bag fee will go live Tuesday or Wednesday. She said it would appear at stopthebagtax.com, where an effort against a California bag fee currently resides.
Still mad about that 20-cent grocery bag fee?
If a group of Seattle grocers gets its way, the fee could be history, according to a report in the Puget Sound Business Journal.
The Washington Food Industry, a trade group for independent grocers such as Red Apple and Metropolitan Market, launched a signature-gathering drive on Aug. 8.
The group faces a high bar: It must collect 14,374 valid signatures by Aug. 28.
The Seattle City Council passed the "green fee" July 28. The city estimates that the fee, expected to raise $3.5 million annually for city waste programs, would reduce disposable grocery bag use by 50 percent.
The law goes into effect Jan. 1. Do you want it repealed?
P.S. - We're checking with the industry organization about how people can access the petition and contribute their signatures and will keep you posted. West Seattle Blog ran into someone paid to collect signatures at a neighborhood store. Gee said the signature gatherers would be spread around the city. Let us know where you find them.
Can I please sign something against the grocery industry?Their greed and resistance to moving in a direction that is good for our city and the environment is beyond disappointing. Don't ask me to sign a giveaway to the big grocers. I've already got my re-usable bags and after a few weeks of transition, I don't even notice the difference.
We need to actually make sacrifices and put in a little effort if we are going to make positive changes in this world for future generations.
Stores ought to do what Trader Joe’s does. You do not have to bring a bag ... but if you do you enter [just first name and contact number] for $50.00 of free groceries ... once a week.
Oops, that is enter a drawing for $50.00 of free groceries once a week.
The whole campaign against plastic shopping bags is based on distortions, exaggerations, and dissimulations (AKA lies, lies, and lies). It will accomplish nothing worthwhile.
How does this tax work? Do you have to pay $0.20 for any bag the grocery gives you free? Could the grocery store just have packages of bags at $0.02 each available for purchase in the checkout line, which the customers can toss in the conveyor belt as the first item and avoid the tax since you’re buying them instead of getting them for free? If that’s not possible, could I just buy a box of Hefty bags and use those as shopping bags and avoid the tax?
Maybe I’ll tell them I don’t have any bags and I don’t want any of the twenty cent ones. Just leave it all jumbled in the cart. “Oh, and can you help me to my car?”
Hopefully the Seattle Politburo and their head communist, Comrade Premier Nickels, will have their latest bolshevik revolution mandate destroyed as its put to a public vote.
I would NEVER go into a store that forces me to pay for Bags, unless it is Sav-A-Lot or Aldi. If Publix did that, I would go to another store.
“The city estimates that the fee, expected to raise $3.5 million annually for city waste programs.”
What are the chances the money will really be spent on city waste programs? Unless one considers that many of the city programs are a waste.
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