Commentary
Signed by then-Governor Jerry Brown, the legislation prohibited stores from providing customers with thin, single-use plastic bags for their groceries, though it allowed stores to sell consumers larger reusable bags for ten cents each.
Though the law was sold as a “win-win for the environment” by lawmakers, a decade later it’s clear the bill was no such thing, something California lawmakers today concede.
“California’s original ban on plastic bags hasn’t worked out as planned,”
said State Sen. Catherine Blakespear, “and sadly, the state’s plastic bag waste has increased dramatically since it went into effect.”
Blakespear is not wrong. According to a state study,
per capita plastic bag trash increased to 11 pounds annually, up from 8 pounds per person prior to the law.
“We need to do better,” said Blakespear.
‘Playing Environmental Whac-a-Mole’
The dismal results of California’s plastic bag ban are not surprising. Following California’s lead, numerous other states implemented similar bag-banning strategies, and many of them saw similar results.New Jersey, for example, saw
a threefold increase in plastic consumption for grocery bags, according to research. The Garden State’s law was similar to California’s. It banned single-use thin plastic bags, which encouraged consumers to rely on heavy duty plastic bags, which use about 15 times as much plastic.
The problem was, much like in California, customers were only using the bags a few times before trashing them, and
according to the New York Times (NYT), a typical polypropylene bag must be used “at least 10 times” for it to offset the additional energy required to manufacture them compared to the thin bag.
“If we don’t pay attention to the unintended impacts of policies such as the plastic waste ban, we run into the potential of playing environmental Whac-a-Mole,” Dr. Shelie Miller, a professor of environment and sustainability at the University of Michigan, told the NYT. “We solve one environmental problem only to create or exacerbate another problem.”
The Seen and Unseen
Miller’s point about the unintended consequences of policies will sound familiar to students of economics.Almost two hundred years ago, the French economist Frédéric Bastiat talked about the importance of seeing both the
seen and the unseen consequences of actions.
“The entire difference between a bad and a good Economist is apparent,” wrote Bastiat. “A bad one relies on the visible effect while the good one takes account both of the effect one can see and of those one must foresee.”
Bastiat was issuing a warning about looking at only the intended and immediate effects of a policy, and ignoring what the twentieth-century writer Henry Hazlitt called its “
secondary consequences.”
This is precisely what California lawmakers did, and the unfortunate result was an increase in plastic trash. California lawmakers, to their credit, admitted their error. Unfortunately, the mistake does not appear to have delivered them a dose of economic humility.
Instead of simply rescinding the statewide ban on thin plastic grocery bags, which backfired so badly, California lawmakers
decided to ban all plastic grocery bags in stores.
Unlike the previous bans, the measure is likely to actually reduce plastic trash. This, however, is only the intended and immediate effect. The policy will also have secondary consequences, and while no one can predict the future, some of the likely unintended consequences are foreseeable.
One reason thin plastic bags are popular is that they are convenient and efficient: the bags are light, cheap, and can be discarded after a single use. Heavy duty bags
cost much more, but higher costs are not the only secondary consequence.
Heavy duty bags also require a great deal more maintenance. They must be washed routinely, which requires energy. The amount of energy it requires to wash reusable bags is higher than the amount of energy it takes to produce single-use plastic grocery bags,
sustainability researchers say.
Indeed,
a 2020 United Nations study found cloth bags must be used 50–150 times before they have smaller climate impact than a thin plastic bag. If that number sounds high, consider that
a Danish study found cloth bags must be used 7,100 times to have a smaller climate impact. (A bag made from organic materials is more than twice that.)
But higher energy and monetary costs are not the only secondary consequences. If heavy-duty reusable bags are not washed routinely and stored properly, they can become riddled with germs and bacteria,
health departments warn, particularly E. coli and Salmonella, which can cause food poisoning.
The Curious Task of Economists
The Nobel Prize winning economist FA Hayek once observed that the “curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”
It’s a phrase that comes to mind watching California lawmakers double down on its ban on plastic grocery bags, a policy lawmakers passed ten years ago and today admit failed.
It’s true that the policy this time is likely to actually reduce plastic bag trash, but it’s doubtful the ban will have a meaningful impact on plastic waste. YouTubers
have effectively pointed out the absurdity of the idea that you can buy every food and product imaginable at the grocery store wrapped in plastic; you just can’t carry the products wrapped in plastic home... in plastic.
In the large scheme of things, California’s ban on the cheap, thin grocery bags many consumers prefer is likely to be little different from the silly bans on plastic straws, a moral panic that
appears to finally be over. Studies show that plastic production is
projected to double over the next decade and a half, and bans on plastic straws and light grocery bags are not going to change that.
Basic economics teaches us that everything comes with tradeoffs, and plastic bag bans are no different.
The best case scenario for California’s law is that in exchange for a bit less plastic trash, consumers will spend a great deal of time, energy, and money maintaining their reusable cotton shopping bags. The worst case scenario (or one of them) is that consumers will not spend sufficient time and energy maintaining their heavy tote bags, and as a result the state will experience a spike in foodborne illnesses.
