On December 19, the Seattle City Council voted to ban plastic shopping bags, but that was the easy part. The challenge, as the council learned the hard way two years ago, will be staving off an attempt to repeal that law. This time, council members believe they have a silver bullet.
In a notable about-face, a coalition of the largest grocery store chains says it will formally back the council's law. That would save roughly 1,000,000 plastic bags per major grocery store each year, according to Northwest Grocery Association (NWGA) president Joe Gilliam. His group represents the city's grocery giants, including Safeway, QFC, and Fred Meyer.
"We support this right now," Gilliam says. What if the ordinance is challenged with a ballot referendum? "It's possible that we would contribute to the campaign to uphold the law," Gilliam says.
That's a very different tune than NWGA sang two years ago, when it expressed concerns with an ordinance placing a fee on all shopping bags, paper and plastic. "The Nickels administration was married to this idea of a 20-cent bag tax that went to government—that was a nonstarter," Gilliam explains. His group stayed "neutral" on that fight "and we all saw the results of it," he says. The American Chemistry Council funded a $1.4 million campaign that ultimately overturned that measure in August 2009.
But this time, grocery store operators like a provision that allows them to keep a nickel for each paper bag, a model Seattle is copying from similar successful laws passed this year in Bellingham and Mukilteo. That would offset the cost of switching from plastic to paper, which costs the average grocery store about $60,000 a year.
Gaining the support of big grocers is a political win for Council Member Mike O'Brien, the bill's sponsor, who has been consulting grocers since early summer (an independent grocery group is still opposed). "This approach is not a new tax," says O'Brien, explaining why the new model attracts previous opponents. And avoiding higher costs for grocers avoids passing on higher costs to shoppers. He adds, "Everyone except the plastic lobby agrees the environmental problem is real."
Even though city residents use an estimated 292 million plastic bags a year, the city estimates that only 13 percent of those bags are recycled.
In what may be a sign of opposition to come, bag maker Hilex Poly took out an expensive half-page ad in the Seattle Times three days before the council vote, declaring their opposition to "new fees, fines and bans!"
However, Gilliam and council members hope the grocery industry's support could allow this measure to stick—and neutralize the plastic bag lobby's sway on the public. Gilliam explains, "As people see the retail community supports doing the right thing environmentally, and that there is a way to do it without causing the price of groceries to go up, I think that has value." 
