Do Plastic Bag Bans Actually Work?

It is both easy and difficult to miss plastic grocery bags – easy because they are strong, light, free and they can double the small garbage bags once you have obtained them at home and empty your grocery products, and that the single use goal of the bags has been served; Hard because exploded things are getting everywhere. Throwing on lots of waste, they are caught in the wind and tangled into electric lines, collect around the borders and in the gutters, and end up heading towards the coasts, where they litter shores and even jump towards the sea, enriching and stifling marine life and a leachivant of toxic chemicals in the water. Plastic bags and other plastic waste also discourage tourism in the strewn areas and reduce the values ​​of properties at the water’s edge. According to a 2022 study, plastic waste cost $ 100 billion per year per year in damage to marine real estate and ecosystems.

The legislators responded. Since 2010, more than 100 countries have implemented partial or total prohibitions or fees on plastic provisions bags at national or subnational level. In the United States, 611 state or local policies were promulgated from 2008 to 2023 – the overwhelming majority, 91%, imposed in the city or canton.

Are plastic bag prohibitions successful?

What is the effectiveness of the measurements, especially in the places where the bags are the greatest harm – as well as the ribs? A new paper in Science Asked this question, and the happy answer that the researchers found?Very Effective – In some cases, the reduction in the number of plastic bags scattered on the shores of almost 50%. With environmental measures such as recycling and biofuels are often not up to their overhauling, plastic bags regulation seems to count as a brilliant green victory.

“I was surprised to see how effective plastic bag policies were to reduce the coastal litter of the plastic bag,” explains Kimberly Oremus, associate professor at the School of Marine Science and Policy at the University of Delaware, and co-author of the Science paper. “Although they do not eliminate the problem, they help to mitigate it. What gives me hope is the growing number and geographic dissemination of these policies in the United States “

The new study, which was led by environmental economist Anna Papp, a postdoctoral scholar in the MIT, examined the composition of debris collected during 45,067 coastal cleanings from January 2016 to December 2017, comparing the results of those who were not in the courts that had implemented plastic bags to those who did not do it. In areas that had implemented prohibitions or restrictions, there were between 25% and 47% less bags than in unregulated areas. In addition, there were 30% to 37% fewer animal reports entangled in these areas.

How do plastic bags work?

The regulations on the bags implemented in the so -called treated areas were one of the three types: prohibiting purely on plastic bags; Partial prohibitions allowing thicker and reusable bags which do not travel so easily on the wind; And the costs – essentially taxes – on plastic bags, paid as part of the grocery bill with cash lines. Of the three, partial prohibitions were the least effective in eliminating plastic bags from the flow of coastal waste. The costs, surprisingly, were more effective than pure and simple prohibitions; The authors have no final explanation for this, but they have some ideas.

“A hypothesis,” explains the Orimus, “is that in at least in some cases, the costs of the costs are used to further reduce the litter. Another hypothesis is that plastic bag costs are applied to more retailers than prohibitions of plastic bags. [Also]Many complete prohibitions include exemptions for certain retailers or types of bags, such as authorization of plastic take -out bags in food safety restaurants. Our final hypothesis is that the costs could have higher compliance rates than a complete ban. »»

Everything that happens in the different jurisdictions does not remain in these jurisdictions. The researchers reported what they called both negative and positive overflows from one place to another, with certain areas with in force regulations that accumulate bags that have exploded in unregulated districts, and certain unregulated places prove to be at least a little cleaner if they shared a border with a regulated community. Overall, greater coherence throughout a larger geographical footprint is obtained by state -of -scale prohibitions, rather than prohibitions from Patchwork County or Canton.

“State -scale regulations cover the greatest number of people and cleaning during our period,” explains PAPP. “The robustness of their effects can be due to their more complete geographic coverage, minimizing concerns related to the repercussions, such as consumers bringing plastic bags from unregulated areas to regulated areas.”

What more can we do to reduce plastic waste?

Papp and Oremus see a need for continuous plastic restrictions not only in the United States, but elsewhere. A 2022 survey of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) which they cite in their article, for example, have found that certain parts of Africa have 12 times more plastic waste not collected or poorly managed than the United States, which must all be controlled or eliminated. To this end, the PAPP and Orimus report, 175 countries are now in talks to create the world’s first world treaty. The need for such a pact is in a hurry. More than 460 million metric tonnes of plastics are produced worldwide each year, according to the International Union for Nature Conservation, and more than 20 million metric tonnes of what ends in the environment. This waste figure is set to triple by 2060, projects the OECD.