You expect us to pay attention to some corporate lackey's opinion who doesn't seem to notice all the plastic bags waving in the breeze and rolling across the marches?

How about this: The stores started using these bags because they are cheaper. How about charging 5 cents for paper bags, 15 cents for plastic, and nothing for neither. The store would keep the money- not the city. If you forget to bring your bag, just roll the cart out to your car and unload it onto the seat or into the bag you left in the car. You don't *always* need your item(s) put into a bag anyway.

What I see here is a solution offered to counter a very real problem. Yes, plastic bags can be recycled, but most people in Juneau do not recycle, and the volume of plastic that gets thrown away is ridiculous. These bags take years to biodegrade in ideal settings, and practically don't in landfills. It's not an unreasonable price either; if 15 cents breaks the bank, then there are other problems at hand.

To complain that this is about increasing the reach of government is absurd. This is a citizen sponsored initiative.

It's amazing how childish some supposed adults can get over an easily avoidable, negligible tax.

Milspec., you've already admitted you make over a quarter million dollars a year. You are being nickel/dimed to death the same way my little brother was "bleeding to death" the first time he got a papercut.

Again, it's a wholly avoidable tax. Show some responsibility for your actions and stop whining.

As I stated previously - I never wanted plastic bags. Nor do I remember a big hue and cry for plastic bags - the Juneau merchants choose what sort of bags they use in their store - and they chose plastic. Now they want to charge us for the merchant's choice - maybe they should go back to paper bags.....simple solution. I recycle ALL my plastic bags. I try to remember my reusable ones. In fact - I took my reusable bags to the store on Sat. and while I was packing my groceries that were piling up because the checker was ringing them up faster, since she didn't have to pack the groceries herself, I was getting dirty looks from the people in line. I guess it seems I was holding up the line while trying to pack my groceries.....can't win.

I can see you are a very jealous person. I suggest you quit whining and get off your back side and better yourself instead of taking from others. I don’t care if I made millions; it is none of your business. I say pass the bag tax, which can be avoided, I also say lets raise the taxes on heating fuel and groceries. Let’s raise taxes on everything we use from day to day. And when it’s said and done who do you think it will hurt the most?
I remember when the city had the incinerator we didn’t see all those bags in the trees and blowing in the breeze around the landfill. Why not, every time you shop purchase a box of kitchen trash bags, open them up at the counter and ask the checker to use them.

More biodegradeable plastics are coming. I believe the poop bags the city leaves at trails are biodegradeable, correct?

I also think it's pretty silly that folks are upset and focusing on a potential .15 cent tax, as opposed to thinking "wow, that is a lot of plastic when you think about it, and if I just got 4-5 reusable bags, I could eliminate garbage at my house, and do something positive." - - - -

Positive thinking, people!

In addition to the various and sundry jobs I have held, I once was responsible for hiring and training new checkers and courtesy clerks for a supermarket, and I have worked at a local store as a checker as well.

It is much faster to bag groceries in plastic then it is to use paper and reusable bags. If customers want double bags, plastic wins again--paper bags will tear if not properly doubled. The plastic bags feed out of a rack partially open, as opposed to having to spend time reaching for paper and then opening it, before placing it down to be used. The plastic bags are also supported by a frame, making it easy to put items in them and when reusable bags get old they lose shape and one hand often has to be used for support rather than bagging.

Plastic bags help keep grocery costs down, and most checkout stands in the grocery stores in town are set up for plastic and would have to be retrofitted for paper and reusable bags--cost to be borne by customers.

If you want to have slow service at the check out, by all means support this initiative. If you want to retain faster trips to the store and adult freedoms, then oppose it.

@ggcrackers: for one, your point is stupid. A bag tax doesn't equate to a loss of freedom or slow service. Two, the amount of time it takes to open a paper or reusable bag and put items in is negligible. They also hold more than plastic bags, requiring fewer of them. Three, where was your outrage during the decline of the full-service gas station?

Also, you could bag your own stuff. If you want "adult freedoms" maybe you should adopt "adult responsibilities."

PP, who the heck are you to tell me what adult responsibilities are?

You are clearly, and sadly, misinformed to the nature of responsibility as well. Rules, laws, and regulations are the absence of responsibility. Who cares if you do 'the right thing' if there is a threat (law) hanging over you.

Responsibility is doing the right thing in the absence of the threat.

Freedom presents us with a choice that, through the experience of growth and the watching of others, we have the tools to make. It is a shame that you don't know the difference; as evidenced by your many misguided statements on this forum.

As well, you did not reply to the main point of my previous post, the longer wait times in line, but you did resort to shallow, ad hominem attacks. Do you have experience as a checker or trainer of checkers to refute that, or are you that crazy lady I saw, ironically, at the Fourth of July parade collecting signatures for this measure?

Paper bags consume 10x the amount of energy and 100x the amount of water to produce than plastic bags, and they do not decompose any faster in a landfill than the plastic variety. And of course you can't make paper without killing trees, whereas plastics can be made from things like garbage corn stalks.

So when stores switch back to paper, are we going to tax them too? When does the madness end? Why don't we tax the little piece of paper that gets wrapped around a stick of gum? It gets thrown away without being recycled. For that matter, let's tax toilet paper! It only gets used once. Lets force everybody to wipe with their worn out reusable shopping bags.

Let’s leave the toilet paper out of this, remember this?
“Although my ideas are in the earliest stages of development, they are, in my mind, worth investigating. One of my favorites is in the area of forest conservation which we heavily rely on for oxygen. I propose a limitation be put on how many squares of toilet paper can be used in any one sitting. Now, I don't want to rob any law-abiding American of his or her God-given rights, but I think we are an industrious enough people that we can make it work with only one square per restroom visit, except, of course, on those pesky occasions where 2 to 3 could be required. When presenting this idea to my younger brother, whose judgment I trust implicitly, he proposed taking it one step further. I believe his quote was, "how bout just washing the one square out."
“Sheryl Crow”

@ggcrackers: you can either act responsibly or have responsibility imposed upon you. This is the reason it's illegal to drink and drive, to litter, and to threaten people with violence. If people were going to act responsibly on their own and use fewer plastic bags, they would have by now, and as there is no incentive for them to do so, they have not. Taxation produces an incentive. You may not like it, but that's probably because you weren't acting responsibly in the first place.

And Atam Gits, are you joking? If your chicken infects your bag with salmonella, it infects you with it when you pick it up, too. The bacteria that accumulates in a reusable bag is not really a problem--it either self-limits (without food, bacteria die, like any other organism) or doesn't produce sufficient quantities to become pathogenic (bacteria are different than viruses--one bacterium will not make you sick; there need to be enough in the original infection to actually cause illness).

Looking ahead to various alternative futures, I've been wracking my brain for comforts available to people whose lives are tied up in bags in the remote possibility that a bag tax doesn't make it into City code. I've come up with these:

1. Every bag that is landfilled is sequestration of several grams of carbon at much less cost than for CO2 capture and sequestration.

2. Every bag that is landfilled is just that much less plasticizer for Hellfire missile propellant.

3. There will be continued work for community-service miscreants.

4. An "Adopt a Dump" volunteer opportunity remains viable.

5. Those responsibly re-using or disposing of bags won't be required to pay extra for the privilege.

6. People concerned about bags won't have to switch to more knotty concerns like the high sodium content of our table salt or the obscene number of crashes in Flight Simulator X, cousin of the terrible effect of simulated anthropogenic CO2 in climate simulations.

If you can think of more, let us know.

Lou