PublicCola’s "Comment of the Day" goes to Elaine. She had this to say about the news that the American Chemistry Council (aka, the Benjamin Braddock plastic PAC) contributed $500,000 to the campaign to repeal the .20 grocery bag fee:
3. Elaine says:
hmm, that would pay the bag fee for 2,500,000 bags. Just saying.
07/20/2009 AT 1 : 28 PM
Full disclosure: PubliCola made a $600 contribution to the pro .20 bag fee campaign, the "Seattle Green Bag" campaign. They have raised $64,742.
The chemical council-backed "Stop the Bag Tax" campaign has raised $750,000—none of it from Seattle.
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I wanna donate, too! There’s a bag tax in SF and I love how the shops now ask if you actually need a bag.
Now we just to ban Styrofoam in Seattle. I saw it everywhere in Seattle as carryout containers. Not even McDonald’s uses Styrofoam anymore.
You can donate here: https://www.upwardstech.net/greenbagcampaign/donate/
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The bags can end up killing sea life. The measure reduces this kind of pollution. Even when bags are recycled they burden the recylcing stream; the average person uses about 300-500 bags a year. Over the years each person who takes thsoe bags thus is responsbile for a huge mass of plastic entering the waste stream or the recycling stream.
Who’s paying for all these “free” bags today?
All of us who shop at the grocery stores that hand them out. The grocery store doesn’t get them for free. The grocery chain buys them with money it gets from selling all its other products. So today, all of us pay for the bags, whether we take them or not.
This is a system of forced subsidization. Non polluters (those not taking the bags) are forced to subiside polluters (those who take them).
The American Chemical council members make a pile of money, nationwide, from this system of forced subsidy of their product that pollutes.
Nice monoopoly, if you can get it!
They like it when nobody ever thinks about the cumulative impact of these bags. Their entire “market” is based on this nonawareness and the the cultural system that allows grocery store chains to force nonpolluters to pay for the polluting products and choices of others.
The reason this bag fee (sic; it’s really ban on the forced subsidy) measure is important is it can lead to nationwide revulsion against the entire system of forced pollution. This cultural change can really reduce waste. Of course the chemical companies will fight tooth and claw for their system of monopoly profits — built on forcing nonpolluters to pay for their polluting products.
You can donate here: https://www.upwardstech.net/greenbagcampaign/do...
Thanks, we need all help we can get. And email our video to all your friends: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Hq5ivYUFKA