20 Cent Shopping Bags

Last week, the Seattle City Council approved a 20 cent per bag tax on retail shopping bags. So the question that check out baggers have asked for about the past 20 years: “Plastic or Paper” will now have some cost attached to it. We can assume the retailers will pass this tax along to the customers. This is a somewhat controversial move on the part of Greg Nickels and his council and is not being that well received. However it is what it is – a necessary move in greening up at least our part of the planet.

What can you do? I know what I’m doing. Investing in cloth shopping bags! These were vogue in the 1990′s but faded away. Now they’re making a comeback and with good reason. There are 2 Quality Food Centers (QFC) in the Greenwood area: one is on 15th near 85th and the other is on Holman Road. The Holman Road QFC is currently selling cloth bags for 99 cents (with your QFC advantage card). These bags are light-weight but full sized shopping bags. They have vinyl bottom liner inserts to give the bag form and reinforce the bottom (so don’t lose those). These bags are green in color (of course) and are branded with the QFC logo but it’s not overly large branding so you can take them anywhere.

For a buck, these bags are a good deal. Just work them into your regular shopping and soon you’ll have a collection of them. The tax doesn’t take effect until January 1st. After that if you use only them 5 times, they’ll pay for themselves. Otherwise, you’ll get dinged and your shopping bill will go even higher after January 1.

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