Plastic Bag Bans

Environment America has released a report on the effectiveness of plastic bag bans in the United States. They are effective in reducing plastic waste litter.

Plastic bags not only kill wildlife, threatening our ocean and other ecosystems, they are a source of microplastics, which have been implicated in human health problems.

As reported in Grist:

“The report looked at plastic bag bans nationwide but focused on five representative policies in New Jersey; Vermont; Philadelphia; Portland, Oregon; and Santa Barbara, California. New Jersey’s, enacted in 2022, has had the greatest impact, eliminating more than 5.5 billion plastic bags annually. Policies in the other jurisdictions eliminated between about 45 million and 200 million plastic bags per year, depending on population size.”

The Grist article points out that other reusable bags, including paper bags, take energy and water to produce and recycle, and so the goal is to reuse bags. Of course, cotton bags also take energy and resources to produce, there is no free lunch, but they are not fossil fuel products, and taking their full life cycle impact on the environment and the terrible problem plastic pollution is, cotton bags are a more ecologically friendly alternative.

 However, a study that suggested that cotton bags were a less ecological alternative to plastic has been published. This report has been criticized as it dismissed pollution from plastic bags as “negligible for Denmark,” (where the study was done), and they certainly didn’t quantify potential health problems from microplastics. Life cycle analyses are important but are only a guide, and are notoriously difficult to do. There are always many assumptions. Unfortunately there is a tendency to compare apples to oranges, or to dismiss those aspects that are hard to quantify (in this case, damage to ecosystems by plastic bags, health problems from microplastics), either because there isn’t a simple accepted monetary valuation or the data regarding adverse effects is not precise enough yet.

 The bans also have to avoid loopholes: switching to heavier plastic bags meant to be reused, as was done in California in 2004-2021, led to an increase in the weight of plastic bags per person! But that doesn’t mean that it is time to give up on such bans. By themselves such bans won’t solve the plastic pollution problem, but they bring awareness, and you have to start somewhere. After all, saving billions of plastic bags isn’t nothing!

Photo credit Susan Levinson. Los Angeles does have drainage grates, but plastic will find a way!