So the 20-cent bag fee, a big blunt instrument to deal with a second-tier problem, bit the ballot dust. What next?

The plastics lobby, which put up $1.4 million to kill the Seattle initiative and send a warning to bag bashers around the country, may wish it had sat on its money. One message green campaigners may draw from this debacle is, Don’t mess with bag fees (or, as opponents and media will promptly label them, “taxes”). Instead, go straight for a ban on plastic bags, San Francisco-style. That would leave consumers an out—paper bags, which many pine for anyway. It might even draw backing from the paper industry. Never mind that, if they’re recycled, plastic bags are less energy-intensive and polluting than paper.

Officials trying to limit the spread of sewer-clogging, critter-choking, forever-lasting bags might try a softer approach: Make all stores that dispense plastic bags (not just supermarkets) set out containers to receive and recycle. These needn’t be big barrels; small stores could have countertop cartons. Heck, get the Chemistry Council to deliver on its rah-rah-recycling rhetoric and pay for them. Sure, consumers can recycle bags at home, but many don’t realize that. (Check out the trash bin in your workplace kitchen.) Store receptacles would remind them. And many might find it easier to dump loose bags there then two bag them up for the bin at home.

The mayor’s sustainability office (while Nickels is still mayor and we still have one) might also talk to Asian and other ethnic markets about reducing, not banning, bag use. Few sell reusable bags. And many cashiers at Viet-Wah, Uwajimaya, and elsewhere seem to try, with remarkable ingenuity and all the most hospital intentions, to disperse groceries into as many throwaway bags as possible. One for this grapefruit, another for that mango…. All those bags may be helpful for a frail grannie with a passel of small children helping carry the groceries. Otherwise, they’re a nuisance as well as a waste.

Duc Tran, Viet-Wah’s owner, vehemently opposed the bag fee. Now I love his stores and Uwajimaya, where I’ve shopped for 20- and 30-plus years respectively. But they and their competitors could do much more to cut the glut, stave off future bag laws, and reap the benefits of reusable-bag logo display. And don’t say that’s not the Asian way. China, the heartland of plastic bags, banned them last year.