The irritating thing about the stupid plastic bag ban, is that I often use the plastic bags for my small trash cans at home.
Before, the bags were thicker, and it would survive a trip home. So these were reusable. Then, they made the bags thinner, especially from the supermarkets, and the bag would fail, and get punctured, so you had to throw them away. Thus, these flimsy bags were non-reusable.
Now, I have to buy brand new plastic bags in bulk, just to fulfill my usage needs, when before the ban, we got them for free.
I’ve always thought the plastic bag bans were a bit silly. Those are definitely one of the more reusable and recyclable of the disposable plastic items.
On the other hand since we don't get the plastic bags for free anymore I'm usually struggling to find a sturdy plastic bag at home when I need one, e.g. to wrap shoes in a travel bag.
No, that's not an argument about not banning them, just a funny observation how these things change. I also used to often not buy any trash bags and just use the decently sized grocery store ones, but maybe in never tossing but reusing them I was already an outlier.
I thought the bag banning was the wrong thing myself. I always reused my grocery bags as trash bags, now I have to buy trash bags...which seem like they use more plastic. But maybe most people don't use them that way.
They recently implemented a similar ban in Chicago. Now stores just give out thick "reusable" plastic bags. The whole thing has been an all around failure: it's strictly worse for the environment and consumers indirectly pay for more expensive bags
Two things happened as a result - the plastic thickness was increased so they can call them reusable instead of single use, and stores started charging for them.
Instead of reducing plastic waste it had the opposite effect.
The stores in CA where plastic bags were banned now have insanely THICKER plastic bags they charge you some small amount for, and they claim are reusable.
They are really thick, almost as nice as hardware store bags, but they all get thrown away.
They should have require a standardized bag/crate with deposit that you would use instead, make it durable enough and people would bring it back or just throw it on the sidewalk and enterprising youths could collect them for the deposit.
Obviously that's not how they're meant to be used, but you bring up a good point about the interaction of policy and behavior. These policies cannot be made without consideration for what behavior they will incentivize. In the case of disposable grocery bag bans, requiring that said disposable bags be made of more sturdy plastic so as to technically qualify as reusable is only going to harm the environment more as consumer habits won't change. The solution, of course, is not to throw up our hands and declare that nothing can be done. Banning the sale of these technically-reusable bags at point-of-sale very well might solve the problem and cause consumer behavior to shift as the sustainable practice of bringing your own bags becomes the most convenient one.
Some people find utility in these sturdier plastic bags, so a general ban would only do harm. They just specifically shouldn't be sold at checkout like disposable bags used to be.
The "reusable" plastic don't really solve a problem. Like everyone else, I have dozens of tote bags at home all ready. The fact that I need a bag in the first place is only because I forgot them or didn't have enough. Increasingly, stores don't even bother stocking them anymore - I've gotten used to just dumping groceries in my trunk when I forget my point.
The bag bans don't really have a clear objective. "The cruelty is the point" - as some like to say.
They banned single-use plastic bags where I live. Now every place has "multi"-use plastic bags which are 10 times thicker and cost a nickel. I have yet to see one of these bags being re-used.
My reply will probably be lost in all the comments, but when they banned plastic bags here, many stores (Target, Safeway etc) introduced fairly thick plastic bags that they sell for 10c. The way they get around it is they label them as "reusable" - because they're quite sturdy/thick.
But other than being thicker and stiffer, they look just like the old plastic bags.
Most people I know don't know they're reusable (and probably don't care). So they use them as single use bags. It's only 10 cents.
Textbook case of unintended consequence of regulation.
In countries where they actually banned disposable shopping bags, it was even worse.
People end up buying more trash bags (since they had small trash cans to fit the disposable bags), which are thicker, and something like 10x less efficient in garbage removal per pound of plastic than the banned bags. (I’m guessing your stats don’t count trash bags, unless people in the UK use fewer than one a week).
On its own, that was enough to increase plastic in the waste stream.
If you add in other problems (like buying “reusable” bags, then throwing them out), it gets even worse.
So, you need to ban all plastic bags for these measures to actually help.
They just recently banned the bags here in Chicago. I was disappointed that when I went to the store today they gave me a thicker plastic bag with "re-usable" printed on it.
It seems like an idiotic misinterpretation of the entire point of banning bags. What kind of BS political spin-job have we gotten ourselves into?
I actually used to reuse single use bags to line all of the trash cans in my house. Now that my town banned free ones, my family has been trained to reuse. Only now I'm buying disposable trash bags and only using them once.
Fairly sure the overall impact here is worse. Especially since the heavy trash bags you buy consume much, much more plastic compared to the thin film freebies I was using before.
I do hate to see trash bags blowing in the road and know they end up in the rivers and oceans. I guess overall this is still a win, just not for my household.
Well not banned, but they added a 15c charge for thicker ones, so now I spend more and waste more plastic than I was previously. The thicker bigger ones and the smaller thinner ones that used to be free got reused as garbage bags nearly 1 to 1.
I never bought trash bags before these bans went into effect. Now it’s one of our subscribe and saves.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the net effect was that we are using more plastic now than before, even though we use reusable bags most of the time when we go shopping.
The OP was talking about "bag bans". Your linked article talks about a "bag charge". Those are totally different things. Bag bans force forgetful people to buy "reusable" bags that take more plastic to produce, and inevitably pile up an need to be disposed of. Bag charges don't have that issue, because you can continue to buy thin bags, just at a steep markup.
I've seen someone bring their own bags to the grocery store like four or five times since the bag ban got implemented here in LA County. Everyone just gets the thicker plastic "reusable" bags and treats them as disposable. Honestly I think it has made things worse when it comes to the amount of plastic use.
Note that this appears to be a ban on the thin, single user plastic bags only.
We've had a similar ban here in South Australia for a number of years now. It has worked quite well - one either remembers to bring a bag when grocery shopping, or buys a reusable one then.
Before, the bags were thicker, and it would survive a trip home. So these were reusable. Then, they made the bags thinner, especially from the supermarkets, and the bag would fail, and get punctured, so you had to throw them away. Thus, these flimsy bags were non-reusable.
Now, I have to buy brand new plastic bags in bulk, just to fulfill my usage needs, when before the ban, we got them for free.
reply