The world is filled with single-use plastic. While plastic pollution is a pernicious consequence of our need for the versatile and practical material, it also outlives its purpose, ending up in the environment for hundreds of years, usually breaking down into micro and nano-sized particles that travel literally across the globe and sometimes end up being unintentionally ingested by animals and people, even in the most remote parts of the world.
As a result of the negative impacts of plastic on the environment, communities have started banning certain single-use plastic items. Usually, the most challenging to collect and recycle items are the first targets. Single-use plastic shopping bags, made out of low-density polyethylene (LDPE), used to transport purchased items with ease from the store to their final destination, have a useful life measured in minutes. Some consumers reuse them, which are invaluable to some folks, such as the unhoused, who find additional uses for these shopping bags, like for hygienic purposes. Still, they usually are discarded at the end of the shopping trip.
Besides their short-lived, practical life, single-use plastic bags are also difficult to recycle due to their shape, size, and weight. The machinery that typically processes curbside-collected plastic can get clogged up by the bags’ thin plastic film, which can shut down an entire material recovery facility (MRF) to clean out the pesky things.
Moreover, empty plastic shopping bags can take flight with just a bit of a breeze. Once airborne, plastic bags also do a great job tangling themselves onto high branches and drainage pathways and grates meant to stop bigger debris, making them harder to remove from the environment.
And that brings us to one of our first meaningful bag bans.
From Bangladesh With Love
The first countrywide ban on single-use plastic bags was in Bangladesh, in the aftermath of calamitous floods blamed partly on drainage blocked by shopping bags in 1998. By 2001, the South Asian nation found that the prevalence of poly bags in the environment contributed to the months-long flooding in many parts of the country and set out to ban them.
Floods during monsoon season in Bangladesh are an expected nuisance, but the 1998 season was much worse than previous years. The unusually high amount of rainfall in the upper reaches of several major rivers that flow into the Bay of Bengal, including the Ganges, caused more water than usual to run through Bangladesh. Higher tides and increased silting due to earthquakes and deforestation were also contributing factors. But unlike the moon and tectonic plates, plastic bags clogging up drainage paths was an entirely new factor that could have been mitigated by humans.
The stagnant water ruined vital crops like rice and blocked roadways, which, in turn, stopped the flow of goods and the ability of people to go to work.
The impediments to commerce weren’t the only negative consequence of all those plastic bags stopping water from flowing out to the sea. The two-month-long floods also created a public health crisis. The stagnant water festered diseases like cholera and typhoid and hospitals were left inoperable due to the damage caused by the water. Moreover, supplying aid via land or air proved practically impossible. The water would swallow any airdrops, and the roads were impassable. All told, approximately 30 million people were left homeless in Bangladesh, thousands died in the immediate aftermath, and millions succumbed to famine due to the destruction and contamination of farmable land.
Bangladesh’s decision to ban single-use plastic bags seems to have started a broader, global discussion about single-use plastic and introduced the idea of prohibiting the items to other politicians worldwide. Since then, over 100 countries and subnational jurisdictions have imposed bans, taxes, or restrictions on single-use plastic bags. For those of us who would like to see a future planet that isn’t a hellish wasteland, this seems like encouraging news.
Bangladesh may have the distinction of being the first nation to impose a ban over two decades ago, but the use of LDPE shopping bags has actually increased over time.
The World Bank says that LDPE packaging consumption, such as shopping bags, has increased fivefold since 2005 in the country. Bangladeshis consume less than a quarter of plastic than their European counterparts, but garbage mismanagement continues to pose a risk to the environment.
The South Asian nation also serves as an example of how simply passing a plastic bag ban that isn’t enforced will be ineffective. Absent policing shopping bag use, gains in reducing plastic pollution will most likely be tempered or lost, as evidenced in several other places that have banned the bag, like California and Kenya. Unfortunately, passing laws are easier than enforcing them later. Changing consumer behavior, especially at the cost of a convenience they’d had their whole lives and have come to expect, can also prove challenging.
Now that regulations aimed at reducing the amount of plastic shopping bags have been in place in many parts of the world for some time, there is data and research available that can give some insight into the efficacy of these laws.
Do single-use shopping bag bans help abate the endless deluge of plastic onto the environment and its adverse effects? Well, it depends. As with plastic drinking straw bans, getting rid of these shopping bags has proved difficult and requires a significant change in consumer behavior, diligent enforcement of laws, and infrastructure that can collect and recycle bags.
What Happened After Bag Bans?
In 2014, California became the first state in the US to pass a law banning LDPE shopping bags of a certain thickness in businesses like grocery stores. The law was contentious and faced stiff opposition from retailers and plastic bag manufacturers.
Nonetheless, the statewide law was affirmed via referendum in 2016, which also grandfathered in the already 151 bans passed by cities and counties in California. The law didn’t outright ban plastic shopping bags but required shops to offer paper or high-density polyethylene (HDPE) reusable bags for sale, usually priced at ten cents each.
Recent reporting by the Los Angeles Times found that the amount of LDPE shopping bags collected on California Coastal Cleanup Day, an annual, official statewide initiative, shows that the local bans significantly impacted the amount of bags collected. In 2010, over 65,700 bags were collected and counted by volunteers. By 2016, that number had dropped to 24,000 bags. Unfortunately, despite a statewide law, that number has remained flat; in 2022, over twenty-six thousand bags were picked and collected.
Mark Murray of Californians Against Waste, a non-profit organization, told the Los Angeles Times that the per capita amount of bags used has increased, from 8 pounds in 2004 to eleven pounds in 2021, using data from CalRecycle.
As it turns out, consumers in the Bear Republic are purchasing new HDPE bags on most shopping trips. Furthermore, while HDPE is technically recyclable, as California’s law requires, the reusable HDPE bags present the same problems to MRFs as the LDPE counterparts they replaced. As such, there are only a handful of specialized facilities that can recycle these bags throughout California.
One unintended consequence of the state ban was a hepatitis outbreak among the unhoused in San Diego. Most people use plastic bags to carry their purchases and are done with them. But for the unhoused in San Diego, those shopping bags were also a way to “take care of business” cleanly and hygienically.
On the other side of the country, New Jersey passed a much stricter shopping bag law that went into effect in 2022. The Garden State imposed an outright ban, and unlike in California, shoppers can’t just buy a new HDPE shopping bag for a dime, and more businesses like restaurants and bodegas are prohibited from giving out plastic shopping bags to customers.
After a year, the New Jersey Clean Communities Council estimates that the state is on track to eliminate 8 billion plastic bags annually. So maybe there’s something to be said for ripping the band-aid off completely.
Cows and Plastic Bag Smugglers
Shortly after California’s statewide plastic bag ban, Kenya passed a much stricter law that included hefty fines of up to $28,000 and a maximum jail sentence of four years. The African nation also penalized consumers for using banned plastic bags.
Curiously, the ban was welcomed by goat and cow herders as the animals are grazers and sometimes eat plastic bags stuck in bushes and trees. Unfortunately for the creatures and their herders, plastic bags can remain stuck in the digestive tract and be fatal.
According to NPR, the Kenyan ban had short-term success, but enforcement has since decreased, leading to a resurgence of plastic bags in the environment. Moreover, while manufacturing of plastic bags is prohibited in Kenya, smugglers from nearby countries like Ethiopia and Uganda without similar bans are feeding demand. Producers of shopping bags have moved factories outside of Kenya but still have connections within the East African country that facilitate the trafficking of these items.
Bag Tax Appears To Be Working In Ireland
In Europe, Ireland has made great strides in reducing the amount of plastic shopping bags used. Since 2002, Ireland has imposed a tax on all plastic shopping bags, which rises with consumption. Unlike in California, where retailers keep the revenue generated by them, the funds raised in Ireland are a tax that supports an environmental fund.
Ireland’s ban reduced bag pollution by 95%, and ninety percent of shoppers switched to life-long bags, according to the BBC.
You can attribute the success of the Emerald Isle’s plastic ban relative to other countries to several factors. Consumer attitudes towards single-use plastic bags have turned their use into something socially unacceptable. Additionally, there are no plastic bag manufacturers in Ireland to lobby against the ban. It also helps that the law had the support of retailers, including the founder of the Superquinn chain of supermarkets, Feargal Quinn.
The Devil is in the Details
Using legislation to reduce the use of plastic bags can be effective but requires enforcement and a strong enough motivator to change consumer behavior. In Kenya and Bangladesh, for example, plastic bag use initially dropped, but the progress started to erode once enforcement became lax. California’s mandatory fee on shopping bags also reduced plastic pollution collected. Still, consumers have become inured to the nominal charge, and the rate of bags collected on coastal cleanup days has stayed flat.
Ireland’s model shows much more promise, thanks partly to the nation’s proactive approach of adjusting the levy based on consumption. Additionally, unlike in California, where plastic shopping bags have become a new revenue stream for stores, Ireland puts the levy towards an environmental fund, providing citizens with a reason to support the bag ban.
Done right, bag bans can reduce the number of harmful plastics entering the environment. Of course, consumer adoption of reusable bags is critical, which, in at least Bangladesh, Kenya, and even California, has proved easier said than done.
