Grocery Bag Deal Reached

By Mary Anne Ostrom, San Jose Mercury News, Calif.

Nov. 3–A truce has been reached in the great San Francisco “Bag Wars,” set off earlier this year when environmentally-conscious city officials proposed charging 17 cents for each plastic or paper grocery bag.

Instead, those officials and several major grocery chains said Wednesday that they would work together to use fewer disposable shopping bags and increase recycling efforts. Shoppers will not have to bear the direct cost, as some opponents feared.

The bag debate was being watched by San Jose and other cities that complain about the cost of recycling plastic bags, in particular, because they gum up recycling machines and often end up a blight on the landscape.

Under the agreement, Albertsons, Andronico’s, Bell Markets, Cal-Mart, Cala Foods, Foods Co., Mollie Stone’s and Safeway say they will use 10 million fewer bags by the end of 2006. That could be as much as a 20 percent annual reduction in the number of bags doled out at the city’s 57 grocery outlets.

And it will reduce the amount of plastic refuse by 95 tons, the city estimates. The companies also will contribute $100,000 to a recycling education campaign and increase in-store recycling programs if consumers don’t choose to use reusable cotton totes.

As part of the deal, announced by Mayor Gavin Newsom, San Francisco will begin accepting plastic bags for recycling by the end of next year.

Grocery store officials said Wednesday they were relieved to work out a deal, fearing that a per-bag charge would have become a popular revenue source almost certainly copied by other cities. But the grocers also warned they are not ready to make any similar deals with other cities.

“Let’s see how the agreement plays out in San Francisco,” said Paul A. Smith, vice president of government affairs for the California Grocers Association.

—–

To see more of the San Jose Mercury News, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.mercurynews.com.

Copyright (c) 2005, San Jose Mercury News, Calif.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.

ABS, SWY,