Seattle Green Bag Campaign

The Seattle Green Bag Campaign is a local grassroots movement to promote environmental sustainability by reducing the unnecessary use of disposable bags.

It’s estimated that Seattle shoppers use 360 million disposable shopping bags, paper and plastic, each year. Last year, after large voter outcry against this waste, Seattle passed an ordinance establishing a 20 cent fee on disposable shopping bags.

The measure provides a market-based incentive for smart shopping, and generates revenues to promote recycling and waste reduction and to supply reusable shopping bags to low-income consumers.

Shortly after the signing of the ordinance, the American Chemistry Council quickly spent almost $200,000 bringing in paid signature gatherers from California to put a measure on the 2009 ballot on whether Seattle should keep its latest environmental law. After succeeding in buying their way out of this for another year (and stopping the public education work that was about to start), their crew moved on to Nevada, and this plastics lobby started staffing their campaign in Seattle.

In response, a campaign team of concerned citizens has formed to work to uphold the existing law as passed by the Seattle City Council.