Do Plastic Bag Bans Actually Work?

For it is easy and difficult to miss plastic food bags is essential because they are strong, light, free, and they can double as soon as garbage bags, as soon as you get them home, and your products are devastated, and the target target of bags was filed; It is hard because the blown up things get everywhere. Threw out in heaps for garbage, they fall into the wind and confused in the power line, collect around the curbs and gutters and ultimately go to the coasts, where they clog coastal lines and even blow the sea, confusing and strangling the sea life and pulling toxic chemicals into water. Plastic bags and other plastic waste also prevent tourism in littered places and reduce the cost of real estate on the embankment. In accordance with One study of 2022Plastic waste costs the world of $ 100 billion a year for damage to marine real estate and ecosystem.

Legislators answered. Since 2010More than 100 countries have introduced partial or general prohibitions or fees for plastic bags for purchases at a national or subnational level. In the United States, 611 state or local policy was adopted from 2008 to 2023 – the vast majority, 91%imposed at the city or village.

Are plastic bags successful?

How effective are measures, especially in places that bags cause the greatest harm, as well as on the coasts? New paper V Science When asked about this question, and the happy answer that the researchers invented?Very Effectively – in some cases, a reduction in the number of plastic bags scattered onto the coastline by almost 50%. With such environmental indicators as Disposal and biofuel Often without justifying their excitement, the regulation of plastic bags, according to the visible, is considered a bright -green victory.

“I was surprised to see how effective the politicians of plastic bags were a reduction in garbage on the shore of a plastic bag,” says Kimberly Oremus, associate professor at the School of Marine Science and Politics at the University of Delaware and co-author Science paper. “Although they do not eliminate the problem, they help to soften it. What makes me hope that the growing number and geographical distribution of these politicians in the USA “

A new study, which led the environmental economist Anna Papp, an incoming post -instrument scientist in MIT, examined the composition of garbage collected during 45,067 coastal cleaning from January 2016 to December 2017, comparing the results of those places that were in jurisdictions that introduced the restrictions on the plastic package with those that did not have. In areas in which there were prohibitions or restrictions, there were from 25% to 47% less bags than in unregulated areas. Moreover, in these areas there were 30-37% less messages about complicated animals.

How do bans work on a plastic bag?

The rules on bags that were introduced in the so -called processed areas were one of three types: frank prohibitions on plastic bags; Partial prohibitions that allow more used, reusable bags, which do not pass as easily in the wind; And fees – in essence of taxes – for plastic bags paid as part of the account for grocery stores at the checkout line. Of the three partial prohibitions were the least effective when removing plastic bags from the coastal waste flow. The fees, surprisingly, were more effective than direct prohibitions; The authors do not have a final explanation of this, but they have some ideas.

“One hypothesis,” says Oremus, “is that, at least in some cases, the income from fees is used to further reduce garbage. Another hypothesis lies in the fact that payment for payment packages is applied to a larger number of retailers than prohibitions on plastic bags. [Also]Many complete prohibitions include exceptions for certain retail sellers or types of bags, such as the provision of plastic bags in restaurants for food safety. Our last hypothesis is that the fees can have higher correspondence indicators than a complete ban. ”

Everything that happens in various jurisdictions does not remain in these jurisdictions. The researchers said that they called both negative and positive side captains from place to place, and some areas with the rules, however, accumulate bags that exploded from unregulated areas, and some unregulated places turned out to be at least a little cleaner if they separated the boundary with the regulated community. In general, a large consistency throughout the wider geographical trace is achieved by national prohibitions, and not by the Patzhel prohibitions of the district or village.

“National rules cover the largest number of people and cleaning in our period of time,” says Papp. “The stability of their consequences can be associated with their more complete geographical coverage, minimizing the problems associated with side effects, such as consumers who bring plastic bags from unregulated to regulated areas.”

What else can be done to reduce plastic waste?

Papp and Oremu see the need to continue plastic restrictions not only in the United States, but also in other places. One 2022 survey For example, from the organization for economic cooperation and development (OECD), which they cite in their article, found that parts of Africa have 12 times more unprocessed or uncontrollable plastic waste than the United States, all should be controlled or eliminated. To this end, it is currently being in negotiations to report the Papp and Oremus, 175 countries to create the first global plastic agreement. The need for such a pact presses. More than 460 million metric tons of plastics are produced around the world, every year, in accordance with The International Union of Nature Preservation and more than 20 million metric tons of this fascinating in the environment. This waste figure was installed in the triple by 2060, OESR projectsField