On August 18, voters in the King County Primary Election will have an opportunity to support or reject the Seattle City Council approved “green fee” on shopping bags when they vote the city’s Referendum 1.

The American Chemistry Council, which includes plastic bag manufacturers, has contributed $500,000 to the campaign opposing the referendum, Citizens Against the Grocery Bag Tax.

Adam Parmer, the campaign’s manager says that the proposed legislation does not account for the 91 percent of Seattle residents who already reuse and recycle their shopping bags. He believes that the more voters learn about the referendum the more they will oppose it.

"It’s a poorly thought out measure and it’s going to end up costing tax payers millions in the middle of a recession,” said Parmer. “It is not going to have the positive impact we're led to believe it will."

Referendum 1 would require grocery, drug and convenience stores to collect a 20-cent fee for every disposable shopping bag provided to customers. Stores with annual gross sales of under $1,000,000 could keep all of the fees they collected, to cover their costs.

Other stores could keep 25 percent of the fees they collected, and would send the remainder to the city to support garbage reduction and recycling programs.

The measure was designed to discourage the use of disposable shopping bags which have a detrimental effect on the environment and to reduce waste caused by these shopping bags.

While the city council approved this ordinance in July of 2008, a sufficient number of voters signed a petition so that the issue will now be decided by a public vote.

Council president Richard Conlin said he is disappointed that this issue is going to a vote, but accepts that citizens have the right to oppose it.

“Think about the environmental consequences (of reusable bags)," Conlin urged voters. "They are really positive and it’s really possible to change your habits really easily.”

The Washington Food Industry was a major force behind the referendum, spending more than $100,000 to collect signatures last summer under a strict deadline. But today, Jan Gee, president of the Washington Food Industry, said they are staying neutral, having accomplished their goal of delaying the ordinance so that customers could be better informed.

“Now we need to take a step back and let the customers decide if they want this fee or not,” said Gee.