I feel a civic responsibility to state some facts relating to our disposable bag use in retrospect of this recent decision.

• An organization called Progressive Bag Affiliates successfully spent 1.4 million dollars to overturn the city’s recent bag ordinance, which would have required most retail and grocery stores to charge consumers 20 cents per plastic or paper bag. It was the single largest amount of money spent on a public initiative in recent history, 15 times that of the proponents’ efforts combined.

• The opponents to the ordinance stated that we should allow people to be responsible for their own bag use and reuse. So far, Seattle has not proven to be very responsible, using 360 million disposable bags a year and recycling only 5.2 percent of its plastic bags.

• Right now, according to The Independent, a “plastic soup” of waste, which is growing “at an alarming rate”, and now at least twice the size of Texas, is floating around the Pacific Ocean. [See this video from Oprah Winfrey]

• Paper bag production, requiring the milling of trees and more fossil fuel, is actually worse on the environment than that of plastic bags.

If only the “Reduce, Re-use, Recycle” campaign had been successful, and Seattle residents had truly been “responsible”, the bag tax would not even have been on the agenda, and all that money wouldn’t have been spent trying to protect commercial interests. In fact, I see many ways it could have actually benefited public health, freedom, and welfare. But corporate public relations experts, such as those at Progressive Bag Affiliates have really mastered their ability to convince us that what’s good for them is ultimately good for us.