Originally published at: California ban on plastic shopping bags goes into effect in 2026 - Boing Boing
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They did this in New Jersey two years ago. And sure, the plastic bags are gone. And they have been replaced by technically biodegradable, but still mostly disposable, natural fiber bags. I have a collection in my house now, because at least once a month, I end up at the store having forgotten to take any bags with me, or having neglected to leave any in my car after my last grocery trip. A lot of these reusable bags are coated in some kind of glossy finish, so I doubt they’re all that biodegradable. I’m not convinced we didn’t just trade one problem for another. The grocery stores still have tons of these bags available for shoppers at each checkout aisle, only now you have to pay for them. Maybe it’s still a net positive. I don’t know. But I was reusing the plastic bags. They made good liners for small trash cans. The reusable bags are not usable for that.
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That’s the keyword here. Sure, a lot better than the old ones, but bring a book library if you want to watch them degrade.
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Here in Austin they tried going full NO PLASTIC BAGS, and it didn’t go well. That said a number of places are still sticking to it and they will use either paper bags or the reusable plastic bags. Both are fine though i recall reading somewhere that these reusable plastic bags are often worse for the environment than regular plastic bags, that said i still think these are changes that need to be made. We need to create habits of using less single use disposable plastic if there are better alternatives.
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Agreed, I worry that this law may have been enacted without a rigorous study of the full lifecycle impacts of many of the “reusable” bags that people usually have. A lot of bags are high quality and may last many years, but, like with anything, many of them are made to meet the bare minimum requirements to satisfy the regulations, which means that they aren’t especially durable and may fall apart after a small number of uses. I’ve seen my share of cheap woven polypropylene bags fall apart after just a few shopping trips. And if those take, say, 10X as much plastic to manufacture as the blown film grocery bags that this law is meant to eliminate, then it’s not necessarily reducing the total plastic going into the environment.
I hope that the law does lead to a net positive outcome but if it doesn’t it wouldn’t be the first “feel-good” legislation that has unintended consequences.
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Well the good news is that, as I said, New Jersey made this change two years ago. It should be possible now to do a pretty sizable study. And with California now making the change, that will increase the available data by an order of magnitude. But New Jersey by itself should make for a pretty good study. It’s the 11th largest state by population, but also the most densely populated state with a history of a lot of environmental issues, and that’s probably related to that population density. We can’t hide our toxic garbage very well.
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California did try a different version of this ban in 2014 and it actually backfired because the “theoretically reusable” bags that people bought when they forgot to bring their own ended up putting more waste into landfills:
So we’ll see if they got it right this time around.
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Yeah, that’s what I’m pretty sure is happening here. At least based on my personal experience. Like…I’m definitely part of the problem. But I’m often scatterbrained and absent minded. I bring my groceries in, put them away, get distracted by whatever, and forget to put the bags back in the car. And then a week later, I’m at the store and, “Aw, crap, I don’t have any bags.”
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Monroe County (the Keys) tried to do this on the county level, by ordinance enacted in Key West. our governor, along with his big-money donor at Publix, thwarted that by taking away home rule about 5 years ago. all laws and ordinances must come from Tallahassee, some 800 miles away from KW and with only a few of the same environmental impacts that we experience here. because Publix will not allow even one of their stores to not use plastic bags. they got their way.
i hate them, and always refuse plastic bags i dutifully carry my canvas shopping bags to the market or grocery store (one even has pockets for wine bottles! w00t!)
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The Marie Callender’s restaurant chain used to have high-quality reusable pie tins with all the pies that they sold. You paid a deposit for the tin, but then got the credit back when you returned them to the store. Inevitably my family would usually forget to return the tins on most trips but then we’d accumulate a decent number and eventually remember to bring them in, and then we’d get enough of a credit back that we’d could buy another pie with it.
I wonder if grocery stores could try something similar with high-quality, sturdy and washable canvas grocery bags. It would be ok if you forgot them sometimes as long as you brought them back for the credit eventually.
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it might depend on the meaning of the last part.
as rob says:
so even if they use more plastic, the amount of plastic escaping the landfill might well be lower, and i think that’s much more important point
even the fact that they’re heavier would seem to help, because the thin bags escape garbage cans, trucks, and landfills with frequency - ballooning their way to places we definitely don’t want
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Man, we have so many reusable plastic bags because we constantly forget. I have been better lately with remembering to chuck some bags in my car but wtf do i do with the huge amount of bags that i already got? 
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This is why we need a study. We’re all just relating this to our own personal behavior, which may or may not be what most people do. In my case, sure, the nicer bags are nice enough that I don’t want to throw them away. But once my absent minded ass has accumulated 20 or 30 of them, I don’t have much choice. Maybe I’m an outlier. Maybe I’m not. It needs to be studied.
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I’m in California and I’ve already been trained to bring my own bags shopping. We have about a dozen balled up in each car.
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Something similar happened in Colorado as of the start of the year, and it really wasn’t a big deal. The way Colorado decided to handle it was to impose a $0.10 fee on each bag used at checkout, except for people on food assistance. I already had several reusable bags, and I had already started using them, not only because I knew this legislation was in process, but because I’d rather use two larger, more durable bags instead of eight smaller, flimsier ones. It’s a habit, like any other, and now that I make sure to leave my reusable bags near the door, where I see them and remember to put them in my car, I very rarely get to the store with nothing in which to carry groceries. I did make sure to buy what appeared to be better-made bags, and they’ve all lasted several years now with minimal damage. I haven’t done much research into the impact of these laws, but personally, I like not having bunches of extra plastic bags stuffed into my cabinets.
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Your groceries no longer are held by plastic as you leave the store… except by every single container they are packed in, shipped into the store using shrink wrapped cases on pallets wrapped in plastic (all of which goes to the dump)… but YOUR bag isn’t plastic, so the cycle is broken now.
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I had this frustration a couple of months ago. I forget what product it was but i noted the plastic packaging, and everything inside was individually wrapped in plastic when wax paper, cardboard or anything else would have sufficed and done a good job at it.
Similarly i don’t love how bread is packaged in thin plastic bags. I go through a lot of bread and the amount of plastic i generate for that alone is concerning to me.
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Unless laws like these have made you think about this issue, and you choose to buy foods with less packaging, which do exist. But I do still consume some plastic, so I guess I should just throw up my hands and give up, right?
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yes, exactly. conscientious consumerism can TRY to mitigate this on a micro-personal level, but the underlying problem still exists: the individual consumer can never overcome the massive overproduction and use of of plastic packaging.
while it is on the consumer to do their best to minimize buying overly packaged goods, there must be regulation to force producers to take a more environmentally friendly approach to packaging.
fresh produce does not have to be wrapped in clear film and then boxed in plastic clamshell packaging.
edit: and then put into plastic shopping bags that are never recycled.
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NY state enacted a plastic bag ban back in 2020. Since then I’ve gotten in the habit of taking reusable bags along with me when I go grocery shopping, but some of the local stores do have the old school paper bags on hand when I forget so the plastic bags really haven’t been any great loss in my opinion.
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