Vivian Weber’s heart is in the right place when she asks us to ban plastic bags in Kirkland by adding a 5 cent fee.

In my experience, it seems that more than half of the individuals shopping in grocery stores in Kirkland are carrying re-usable bags, which is something for Kirkland residents to be proud of. However, attempting to force the issue by charging for bags may have unintended environmental consequences by encouraging those politically against “green” initiatives to dig their heels in further.

Each region of the country has different primary environmental concerns. In New York City, they have limited landfill locations so eliminating plastic bags makes a great deal of sense. In the Pacific Northwest, our main concern is not storage for trash but energy use. The energy and materials needed to create a re-usable bag has been estimated to be 80 times higher than a plastic bag, which, if my math skills still work, means that a bag may need to be used 80 times before there is an environmental benefit. For those individuals who use these bags only a few times or refuse to carry their bags entirely, this additional charge will only serve to drive them further away from making ecological choices.

Most grocery stores allow individuals to return plastic bags to be recycled. Our region also already has a limited version of this 5 cent bag system through a discount on our grocery bill. There are many stores that do not have such a reward system because they are shops that cater to individuals who are browsing. I am not certain how rewarding it will be to force everyone walking on Lake Street to carry a shopping bag based on nothing but the possibility they might buy something.

What might be a better way to underscore sound environmental choices is to thank those individuals who are doing the right thing – whether it is re-using bags, driving high gas mileage cars, mowing with an electric mower or watering their plants with captured rain water. Whatever it might be. There is no question that there are many environmental issues that face us today and I am just not certain how a 5 cent bag charge is going to fix any of them.

Johnmichael Monteith, Kirkland