Mayor Nichols of Seattle is trying to impose a $0.20/per bag surcharge for each paper or plastic bag people use while shopping at food, drug, or variety stores. He pitches this to the public a meer week after wanting to throw a new tax at Seattle residents for "improving the Seattle Public Market," just as the "parks improvement" tax is expiring and following news that the Alaskan Way Viaduct has sunk even more into the ground (and with no useful plan in sight.)

His reasoning? He wants to help the environment by preventing waste before it's waste. As part of the bag-fee, he's also wants to ban all of the Styrofoam containers that 90% of the take out places use for delivery. And I quote, "if we can cut down materials that people use that we know to be harmful to the environment, we can do more with prevention than we can with recycling."

My reasoning? I think we should consider the following:

• 10% surcharge on food - it people are eating then they are shitting and that makes a lot of waste
• $3/beverage citywide - if you aren't bringing your own cup to use, you're causing waste
• $1 increase to water utilities for flushing - people shouldn't be wasting possible compost materials
• $10/planting for all new greenery being planted: that's only going to make paper some day and that's no good
• 25% increase on condoms - same as the bags: if you need new ones, you aren't reusing properly