> Democratic state Sen. Catherine Blakespear said people are not reusing or recycling those bags. She points to a state study that found the amount of plastic shopping bags trashed per person grew from 8 pounds per year in 2004 to 11 pounds per year in 2021.
“It shows that the plastic bag ban that we passed in this state in 2014 did not reduce the overall use of plastic. It actually resulted in a substantial increase in plastic,” Blakespear, a Democrat from Encinitas, said Thursday.
Unintended consequences are important to consider. I wonder what consequences these legislators might be overlooking in their new bill.
I don't know why, but some grocery stores we go to have paper bags for purchase, and others have thick plastic ones. I assume the paper bags would remain available. I hear they weigh a great deal more than plastic bags (at least the old thin ones), and therefore consume more CO2 when transported.
if my state banned them i'd just buy them online and use them; paper bags are not great, reusable bags are ok, but i use plastic bags for other things after using them for groceries so i'd rather just use plastic bags unless they can bring the cost of reusable bags way down
Just to clarify, do you mean thin so-called single use bags, or heavy bags that are intended to be reusable? I've never thought about buying and bringing "single use" bags to the store (I'm sure I'd get strange looks if I did), but I would reuse them for trash like I do with the bags they sell now.
It would probably result in less plastic used, compared to the heavy bags they currently sell.
That's true — it seems like they're engineered to be able to be reused maybe 5-10 times. But I pretty much always just use them once, as a trash bag. For my purposes (and those of many others here), it seems like it's a waste to make a fairly sturdy bag when it's only going to have one more use.
“It shows that the plastic bag ban that we passed in this state in 2014 did not reduce the overall use of plastic. It actually resulted in a substantial increase in plastic,” Blakespear, a Democrat from Encinitas, said Thursday.
Unintended consequences are important to consider. I wonder what consequences these legislators might be overlooking in their new bill.
I don't know why, but some grocery stores we go to have paper bags for purchase, and others have thick plastic ones. I assume the paper bags would remain available. I hear they weigh a great deal more than plastic bags (at least the old thin ones), and therefore consume more CO2 when transported.