When I express my support for a statewide ban on plastic bags by all retailers, combined with a 5-cent fee for paper bags, I sometimes hear: “I already carry my groceries home in reusable bags. I reuse the plastic bags, and recycle the ones I do not use.”

In May, a survey found that nearly half (46 percent) of Kirkland residents bring their own bags to the grocery store. Despite a lack of support for a plastic bag ban and fees, 67 percent would be willing to pay around 5 cents for a disposable bag.

Environment Washington reports that residents in our state take home about 2 billion plastic bags per year or almost 300 bags per person. Made up from oil or natural gas, the useful life of a plastic bag is a short 12 minutes, the average time it takes to carry groceries home. Unfortunately, less than 9 percent get reused and less than 5 percent get recycled. More than 90 percent of bags end up in the landfill.

The number of times a plastic bag can be reused is limited. Many Kirkland residents reuse their plastic bags to carry items, line their garbage cans, or pick up dog poop. However, Susan Freinkel in her book, “Plastic — A Toxic Love Story,” notes that studies show that a plastic bag has to be used at least four times to make up for the environmental impact that goes into making and disposing of the plastic bag. Kirkland residents have two options for recycling plastic bags. They can collect their dry, clean plastic bags into one plastic bag to prevent them from blowing away and then place this bag in their home recycling curbside bin. Kirkland’s recycling is transported to Waste Management’s Cascade Recycling Center in Woodinville, where it is sorted. Unfortunately, many bags do escape and get tangled in the sorting machinery. According to Environment Washington, labor costs to cut away the plastic bags by hand run up to $1,000 per day.

Residents can also bring their collected plastic bags back to participating grocery stores. According to another study by Environment Washington, only 2 percent of plastic bags placed in bins at grocery stores actually were recycled. Many of these bags were diverted to landfill because they were contaminated with food debris and receipts.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, Americans threw 9,182 tons of plastic bags and film (such as dry cleaning and newspaper bags) into the trash in 2009. Despite many efforts to promote recycling, less than 5 percent of plastic bags actually were recycled. Seattle, which has the highest plastic bag-recycling rate in the country, recycles less than 15 percent of its single-use plastic grocery bags.

A simple way to generate less trash is to support a plastic bag ban similar to the ones passed by Seattle, Olympia, and eight other Washington cities and Thurston County. Replacing plastic bags with reusable bags would align well with Kirkland’s sustainability and waste reduction goals with the added benefit of protecting our soils and waterways from plastic pollution.

Sharon and Tom Sherrard, Kirkland