Ten years in the past, California grew to become the first U.S. state to ban plastic luggage. However over the subsequent few years, the state’s landfills really noticed an enhance in plastic waste. That’s as a result of a loophole within the state’s bag ban allowed shops to proceed providing plastic luggage at checkout, as long as the luggage value a couple of cents, have been labeled as reusable, and have been product of thicker plastic. This thicker plastic, after all, meant that every new bag created extra waste than its pre-ban counterpart when it discovered its solution to a landfill.
The concept behind the unique legislation was to encourage individuals to eschew single-use luggage and as an alternative carry their very own reusable ones to the shop. What policymakers seem to not have realized is that it might take greater than a 10-cent payment to alter individuals’s habits.
California lastly closed its loophole final month. The legislature up to date the unique legislation to ban all non-paper luggage from being distributed at retailer checkout stands.
“As an alternative of being requested, ‘Would you like paper or plastic?’ at checkout, shoppers will merely be requested if they need a paper bag, in the event that they haven’t introduced a reusable bag,” Democratic state Senator Catherine Blakespear mentioned in a assertion. “This easy method is simple to comply with and can assist dramatically cut back plastic bag air pollution.”
Throughout the nation, nonetheless, California’s pioneering efforts might have already unfold not simply copycat bag bans but in addition the loophole that undermines them. There are at the very least 5 different states — and probably many extra cities and counties — which have written the identical exceptions into their rules. Now that California’s error is changing into higher identified, efforts are underway to amend at the very least two different states’ current bag bans. In states which might be solely now trying to introduce their first plastic bag bans, legislators are taking care to not replicate the errors of their predecessors.
“You want a full ban on these items utterly,” mentioned Jack Egan, vice chair for the Connecticut chapter of the ocean conservation nonprofit Surfrider. “In any other case, you’ve bought a compromised, hamstrung, hard-to-enforce, simply worked-around ordinance.”
As with California’s authentic legislation, every of the 5 states whose bag bans nonetheless enable thicker plastic luggage — Connecticut, Maine, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Washington — defines a “reusable” plastic bag to incorporate those who exceed a sure thickness: usually 4 mils, although Washington’s legislation began at 2.25 mils — the usual set by California — and is meant to ratchet as much as 4 in 2026. (One mil is the same as 0.0254 millimeters, corresponding to the thickness of a greenback invoice.)
The origins of this thickness normal look like unknown. Some environmental teams informed Grist that, when California lawmakers have been dreaming up the state’s authentic bag ban, they have been making an attempt to not legislate away sturdy, reusable luggage that occurred to be product of plastic, like those obtainable in Dealer Joe’s checkout strains. However these luggage are often round 20 mils — 5 to 10 occasions thicker than these allowed by plastic bag ban legal guidelines. Different environmental advocates recommended it was strain from the plastics business that prevented a extra easy ban on all luggage product of plastic “movie” — that’s, polyethylene that’s skinny and stretchy — which might have included thicker variations. The American Recyclable Plastic Bag Alliance, a commerce group, informed the Hartford Courant in 2019 that “you possibly can ban this product … however the different is worse, each economically and environmentally.”
Melissa Gates, previously the Northeast regional supervisor for Surfrider and now a director at Organizing for Influence, mentioned Connecticut’s legislation was influenced by California’s, in addition to by native ordinances from across the nation. The model of the statewide ban that was backed by Surfrider included an exemption for thick plastic luggage as a kind of “compromise” to win help from large meals and retail business associations. It labored.
“It allowed for thicker plastic luggage however solely with a compulsory payment,” Gates mentioned. The concept was to do away with probably the most environmentally problematic luggage — the actually skinny ones which might be almost certainly to rapidly find yourself trashed, clogged in recycling machines, or ensnared in tree branches — after which discourage individuals from shopping for the thicker ones by charging 10 cents a pop. A final-minute change by Democratic Governor Ned Lamont, nonetheless, eliminated the obligatory payment for thicker plastic luggage, a transfer that Surfrider lamented on the time, on condition that it took away the disincentive for shoppers to reuse luggage.
Even when the payment had stayed obligatory, nonetheless, it’s questionable whether or not it might have been excessive sufficient to get shoppers to deal with the thick luggage any otherwise than they’d deal with a free, thinner bag. For many individuals, 8 cents is a negligible addition to their grocery invoice, and never sufficient to forestall them from reusing thick luggage simply a couple of times (if in any respect) — say, to line their trash cans or clear up after their canine. Then, after they return to the grocery retailer, they’ve to purchase new luggage, incentivizing the luggage’ continued manufacturing.
“As an environmentalist and a social justice advocate, I would favor that we instantly cease making pointless issues out of plastic,” Gates mentioned.
Environmental advocates Grist spoke with mentioned there’s no energetic marketing campaign to amend the Connecticut bag ban, probably due to fatigue over the decades-long back-and-forth that preceded the passage of the state’s 2019 legislation. Rhode Island appears to be in the same scenario: When the state lastly carried out a bag ban this 12 months, greater than a decade after the thought was first launched within the legislature, lawmakers have been “so uninterested in speaking about plastic luggage,” Gates mentioned.
However issues are wanting up in Oregon, the place State Senator Janeen Sollman, a Democrat, is planning to introduce a invoice subsequent 12 months that may increase the statewide bag ban to cowl disposable plastic luggage of any thickness. Sollman informed Grist she’s lengthy identified in regards to the issues with California’s first bag ban, and that she tried to get round them with Oregon’s first bag ban, enacted in 2019. The legislation upped the required thickness of a reusable bag from 2.25 mils to 4 mils to encourage reuse — nevertheless it didn’t work.
The plastics business “simply went round that, made a thicker bag, after which known as it reusable,” Sollman mentioned, though that kind of bag was in the end “simply ending up as one other piece of rubbish.”
Sollman mentioned her forthcoming invoice will mirror the brand new California legislation, which redefines “carryout bag” to incorporate any bag — aside from a recycled paper bag — supplied to prospects at checkout. The invoice can also be anticipated to suggest a phaseout of single-use plastic toiletries, like the sort supplied in resort rooms, together with another measures to scale back plastic air pollution.
In the meantime, different states are experimenting with completely different language to shut the thick-bag loophole — or forestall it from opening within the first place. New York state’s plastic bag ban says a reusable bag have to be produced from “material or machine cleanable material” or “different non-film plastic washable materials.” (Key phrase: “non-film.”) Colorado, Delaware, New Jersey, and Vermont say a bag is reusable provided that it has “stitched handles.”
In Massachusetts, which doesn’t but have a statewide bag ban, Surfrider helped draft a invoice that used a mix of a number of different states’ methods, requiring a reusable bag to have stitched handles whereas additionally clarifying that it “shall not embrace a bag product of plastic movie of any thickness.” Senator Jamie Eldridge, a Democrat who’s been engaged on a statewide bag ban for the previous decade, informed Grist that that language was launched after the plastics business floated the thought of permitting thicker plastic luggage.
“At one level that was certainly one of their pitches,” he mentioned. “So we seemed into it” — and rejected it, after seeing the implications in different states and municipalities. “That’s why we strengthened the invoice,” he added. This 12 months’s model of the laws handed the senate however isn’t anticipated to be voted on within the state’s home of representatives; Eldridge mentioned he plans to reintroduce it in the course of the subsequent session.
Erin Hass, director of the American Recyclable Plastic Bag Alliance, a commerce group, mentioned it didn’t foyer for the Massachusetts invoice, however that it helps the usage of thicker plastic luggage. “The truth exists that buyers may take their movie luggage again to shops, which may then be routed into the prevailing round movie recycling infrastructure,” she informed Grist.
Earlier investigations from ABC Information and Bloomberg have recommended that many of the plastic luggage deposited in retailer drop-off receptacles aren’t recycled. Extra usually, they find yourself in landfills or incinerators.
The 2 different bag ban states with thickness loopholes, Maine and Washington, don’t have pending payments to alter their laws. However that could possibly be altering: Isabella DeFrancesco, Surfrider’s Northeast regional supervisor, mentioned her group’s Maine chapter is making it a “precedence marketing campaign” to do away with that state’s thicker-bag allowance subsequent 12 months. And in Washington state, the Division of Commerce is meant to submit a report back to the legislature evaluating the efficacy of its current bag legislation by the tip of this 12 months, giving lawmakers a possibility to amend the thickness provision.
Heather Trim, govt director of the nonprofit Zero Waste Washington, mentioned the legislature could also be tied up by different plastic-related payments in the course of the subsequent session, however her group plans to prioritize an up to date bag ban in 2026, utilizing language just like California’s new legislation.
“I feel California has nailed it,” she mentioned.
Gates, the previous Surfrider supervisor, mentioned she hopes a sequence of refreshed legal guidelines will replicate what has at all times been bag ban advocates’ intent: to remove single-use luggage — whether or not paper or plastic — the place they’re not wanted, and to get individuals to carry their reusable luggage to the grocery retailer.
“The final word objective,” she mentioned, is “shifting the buyer paradigm away from this wasteful tendency to view issues as single-use, and prioritize comfort over nearly every little thing else.”