In case you missed it, the news coming out of Seattle the last four months has not so covertly been undercut by one single, shining topic…. (no, not the Sonics!)… disposable bags!

That’s right. Way back in April, Mayor Nickels decided to wage war against the mighty plastic and paper grocery bag. Since then, it has grown into legend and become the most important story on everybody’s lips.

Today, that war has ended. As of January 1, if you use a plastic or paper grocery bag from a drug,   convenience, or grocery store… you will be charged 20 cents per bag.

You might think I’m being flippant (and ok, maybe a part of me is) but really, I’m only half joking. The news that this topic has generated since April… is a tad unbelievable. Doubt me? In the Seattle Times, everyone from Danny Westneat to Nancy Leson have chimed in, never mind the actual news stories. Want blogs? Try The Stranger, WorldChanging Seattle, Greenhuman…. you get the point (then again I’m also culpable as this is now the second time I’ve posted about this on the blog. hmmmm). Want to read the press release, check out the Rainier Valley Post.

I’m not undermining that disposable bag use is disgusting. According to SPU, there are 360 million disposable bags used every year in-city. But seriously, I have an insane amount of press releases in my in box about this topic on either side. I’ve been a little shocked, actually, given that the mainstream media in this state has given virtually no coverage to issues like greenhouse gas inclusion in SEPA or even the Living Building Challenge. I guess disposable bags are just easier to write about.

Then again my co-worker, Shawna Gamache, used to live in St. Petersburg  (I know, cool right?) and she says it’s the same thing: you bring your own bag or you pay. (She also says public places require you bring toilet paper. Not so sure I like that one.) Come to think about it, when I lived in France they looked at  you with a queasy eye when you didn’t bring your own bag…..

I know I try to bring a reusable bag, but sometimes I forget. Maybe with the city kicking me, I’ll finally remember it when I walk in the grocery door. Or maybe it’ll be yet another daily annoyance.

What do you think about the decision? Am I way off base here or are there more important things we should be worrying (and picketing) about?

In a separate ordinance, the council also banned polystyrene food containers from restaurants and packing from grocery stores beginning Jan. 1, 2009. For more about that, see any of the blogs cited above.

How much trash does a “green” event produce? Evidently, a lot if you’re the U.S. Green Building Council’s GreenBuild 2007. The annual conference, held in Chicago last year, created 44 tons of waste.

Granted, 91 percent of it - or 40 tons -  did not end up in the landfill, according to Dan Bulley, chair of the Volunteer Committee for Greenbuild in 2007. Instead 300 college students sorted through the waste.

Of the 40 tons of waste diverted, Bulley said seven tons were food scrap, and six tons were wood from expo displays in the exhibit hall.

What’s 40 tons of waste? For people around Seattle, it’s all the dog droppings left in Snohomish County over two days. For out of towners, it’s 260,000 items that washed up on New Jersey’s beaches over a year. For the U.S., it’s on the low end of the total waste a person produces in a year.

When you rationalize the numbers out, the mass waste makes some sense…. it was a week long conference and expo with an exhibit hall and 25,000 participants, so Bulley says it works out to about 3.5 pounds of waste per person (nevermind most people only stayed three days but we’ll go with it….).

But does mass waste ever make sense? The diversion fact is commendable. And the image of college students rifling through my waste (yes, I was at GreenBuild) is something to ponder. But did that 44 tons of waste need to be created in the first place?

Think about it… thousands of people gathering together to figure out how to save the environment and how to build green. And yet they still can’t not use things. 44 tons of things. Thrown away. Isn’t green building all about the idea that the little things - like 44 tons of waste - matter?

No wonder right wing talk show hosts call greenies hypocrites.

Remembering back, the hefty 187-page program could have been …. digital! Or it could have been easier to compost food scraps, or recycle nametags.  Those participating in the expos could have used less literature or cards that pointed attendees to a Web site.

Or, as a green building consultant said to me the other day, the entire conference could have been virtual. If 44 tons of trash sounds like a lot, imagine the carbon emissions from the millions of miles of air travel. (I for one met people from the U.K, Japan, Canada….)

This is by no means an isolated event, just a high profile one. But it seems to me an example of the kinks, shall we say, in the green building movement. Do I have something here or is it too much to think that people promoting green … could change the way they do things? It’s like not seeing the forest for the trees (that were at least, diverted).

For more, Building Design + C0ntruction runs the full press release here. FrontBurner asks if green trash is still green here. Or in another scenario from Wired Magazine here, Brandon Keim explores a Japanese city that just stopped waste collection. Now there’s an idea. 

If Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels and City Council President Richard Conlin get their way, you will be charged a 20-cent “green fee” on all disposable shopping bags from Seattle grocery, drug and convenience stores, starting Jan. 1, 2009.

According to SPU, about 360 million disposable bags are used in Seattle every year, most plastic. That translates to 600 bags for each Seattle resident.

And those handy white foam containers that hold your pho soup or Mexican takeout, pictured at left? Under the proposal, you’ll also stop seeing those. Instead, businesses would have to replace everything from foam plates, cups and egg cartons with a different product by Jan. 1, 2009. Then, they would have to switch to using compostable or locally recyclable packaging by July 1, 2010.

The changes were announced in a proposal today supported by Nickels and Conlin. The legislation isn’t ready yet, but Conlin said it should be finalized, and considered by council, in June.

Nickels said Seattle is the first city in the country (that he knows of) to create a program like this, though cities across the world are adopting similar policies. At least 20 U.S. cities have banned polystyrene food packaging including Portland and San Francisco.                                                                             

Other options include packaging made of corn starch and sugar cane. A spokesperson for local restaurant group Tutta Bella, pictured at right, said at a press conference today that due to the restaurant’s recycling and composting of everything from expired pizza dough to food containers, the waste from all three restaurant locations combined fills only one garbage can per day.

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