peel.

Referendum 1 Rejection!

Seattle voters are funny. When not camping, biking, boating, relaxing, or what have you in the summer months, they diligently go to the polls or check mail, read the Voter Pamphlet, make decisions, secure the ballot within the designated safety envelope*, sign it*, secure the flap and mail off a fragment of freedom after weighing the envelope and ensuring the proper postage was applied. (*=~50% of mailed balloters forget this step.)

And now the results: 75% did not vote for their incumbent mayor and 58% rejected a 20 cent fee on disposable bags. Yet these two outcomes are not dissimilar: the sacked mayor was also a sponsor of the sack tax.

Referendum 1, formerly dubbed the”green fee”, has created two campaigns: the Green Bag Campaign and the Coalition to Stop the Seattle Bag Tax. The former is fronted by a monster sporting 800 plastic bags and running around various summer festivals. It apparently enjoys tweeting and Facebook. (But to his credit, he does reuse 800 plastic bags every time he wears that silly getup.) The latter campaign rings similar feelings of resentment, dumping record-setting funds to support their cause. In between those, however, is probably the right answer to the actual plastic problem: lacking voluntary in-store recycling and innovative distributing initiatives.

The green fee (or: pigouvian tax) placed on paper and plastic bags distributed by convenience, grocery and drug stores was a regressive measure that did not make sense. By weight, the sole landfill in Washington state is comprised of 0.4% plastic, with disposable bags accounting for a mere fraction of this. It is notable that HDPE bags, often used in retail or boutique stores, were exempt from the fee, yet are included in this amount. LDPE, which would have been taxed, is now lighter and more functional that decades ago thanks to advancements in the plastics industry. In the past decade, the industry has also been responsible for marketing and developing biodegradable plastic bags and furthering research on a bacteria that accelerates the breakdown of plastic. (But these are still problematic: biodegradable bags are ten times costlier and the newly discovered bacteria pose negative externalities also.)

The intentions of Referendum 1 were noble, but its implications are negligible. It may one day make sense to use biodegradable bags to contain food scraps which could be composted in the bag. But that day hasn’t come to Seattle. There lay many opportunities for plastics in the coming years, and as more stores offer the option to recycle plastic or directly contract with recycling plants, perhaps the plastic problem will be solved with a market-based solution.