8 comments
I live in California and we've had the single use plastic bag ban for a few years now.
Expectation
Everyone brings 5 reusable bags with them everywhere they go and the amount of plastic in landfills drops like crazy!
Reality
Stores now charge 10 cents per bag and the bags are now heavy duty thick plastic bags. I haven't seen a large increase in people bringing reusable bags to stores, so most people still buy 2-3 plastic bags per grocery store visit. These bags are so thick they can't be tied of and used as trash bags, so I'm assuming they are just thrown away now. Some people like me now have to buy extra plastic bags for trash bags.
It's really nothing that solves any problems and it may be causing more pollution.
Yeah the justification seems to be that they are a cheaper option for reusable bags, but I have never once seen someone bring one of those plastic bags back to the checkout to reuse that way.
While I'm good with this because plastic bags are completely insidious, all that would need to happen to get New York to reverse that is Walmart to pull every single store out of the state at the same time.
Why?