But you have to use way more energy to create them. So paper bags have this one really great thing for them, which is they are biodegradable. ROSALSKY: But so, actually, there are multiple studies - they all show that, actually, paper bags are worse for the environment than plastic. Stacey, so like, please, like, do not hate me for pointing this out. VANEK SMITH: I always get paper grocery bags. ROSALSKY: And that led to a huge increase of paper use. TAYLOR: I find that about 30% of the plastic that was eliminated by banning carry-out bags comes back in the form of thicker garbage bags. Garbage bags are actually thicker than shopping bags, so they use more plastic. ROSALSKY: And so here's the crucial thing that she told me. TAYLOR: Small garbage bags - they went up by 120% - their sales did. But all these people who reuse their plastic bags - they still needed bags. VANEK SMITH: I don't have a dog (laughter).
ROSALSKY: Do you use them to pick up dog poop? Because that's another common thing. ROSALSKY: So people would reuse their bags to, like, line trash bins. REBECCA TAYLOR: What I found was that sales of garbage bags actually skyrocketed after plastic carry-out bags were banned. Taylor recently published this super interesting study about bag bans in California. GREG ROSALSKY, BYLINE: Yeah, love letter might be a little much. STACEY VANEK SMITH, BYLINE: Your newsletter - it was like a love letter to the plastic bag. NPR Newsletter Editor Greg Rosalsky joined Stacey Vanek Smith on our podcast The Indicator from NPR's Planet Money to explain. But those bans may be having unintended consequences. Some states and hundreds of cities have now passed bans on plastic bags or demanding a fee if you use one. They're seen as a toxic pollutant that can do great harm to wildlife.
But I found it interesting to remind us that even the best laid plans can have unintended consequences a truth that appears to be as true in climate policy as it is elsewhere.Plastic bags, as you may know, have a bad reputation. If the average plastic bags drawer is anything to go by, most households use far more single-use bags than they have a need for trash bags, so it’s probably fair to say that taxing or banning single-use plastic bags is a net positive. “After the regulations came into effect, consumers’ plastic bag demand switched from regulated plastic bags to unregulated bags.” “Carryout grocery bags were substituted for similar sizes of trash bags before implementing the regulations,” the researchers wrote in the research paper. While sales of smaller garbage bags jumped after policies were implemented, sales of larger 13-gallon trash bags - the size often found in kitchen trash cans in the U.S. These results echo earlier studies that also showed increases in sales of smaller plastic trash bags. The study found California communities with bag policies saw sales of four-gallon trash bags increase by 55%, to 75%, and sales of eight-gallon trash bags increase 87%, to 110%. Keeping in mind the second life that plastic grocery bags take on in many homes, the team measured plastic trash bag sales in counties with bans or fees in place and compared them to other counties without such policies. An environmental economist, Huang used a new way to calculate the effect of either policy while also accounting for variables such as residents’ income levels and an area’s population density, both of which influence the amount of trash generated in a community. Previous studies have looked at the effect of bag bans on plastic consumption, but not the combined effects of fees or a bag ban. “So, we wanted to see the effectiveness of this policy in reducing bag usage overall.” “We know there is a demand for using plastic bags, and we know, if these policies go into effect, some bags will disappear or will become more costly to get,” said Yu-Kai Huang, a postdoctoral researcher at the UGA Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources. Without the shopping bags available, people look for alternatives - which the researchers suggest means they buy small plastic garbage bags. The issue that comes up is that grocery bags are viewed as single-use items, but they often get a (brief) second lease on life as liners for small trash cans. The new analysis suggests that plastic bag ban policies - while well-intentioned - may end up having the opposite effect.
Researchers at the University of Georgia suggest that banning the sale of plastic bags may come with a side-dish of unintended consequences. Ban them from supermarkets, and the problem is solved, right? Right? Right? Turns out, as is often the case, there may be a little bit more to that story.
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