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Comment by throebd | Hacker News Reader

It is a ban of plastic bags from supermarkets. People have some decency, but with ban there is no way to dispose excrements.

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holy cow this is a great theory. i haven't heard it before, and it would cut through a ton of noise if this could be supported by data. can it?

the disappearance of readily available plastic bags (in the trash, floating around, etc) certainly would make way more sense as something that could suddenly have a huge impact than other theories which are stabbing in the dark at higher level variables that have trended slowly over time like shelter access or density of public restrooms. it would also explain why this problem is uniquely SF -- given the social signaling that is associated with a store being seen as environmentally conscious (by abandoning plastic bags) compared to other cities, it wouldn't surprise me if the rate and degree of abandonment of plastic bags outpaced other California cities.

this certainly seems like the kind of thing that will bubble up to economics textbooks if true, a classic case of unintended consequences by tweaking incentives and regulations. i hope it gets more attention.

Relevant:

"Plastic-bag ban led to hep A health crisis?"

https://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2017/sep/08/stringers-pl...

Plastic produce bags are still free and are even better suited to human waste than non-sealable open grocery bags.

Also, banning plastic bags and straws has no positive impact on the environment.

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/04/09/711181385/are-...

"That said, these bans do reduce nonbiodegradable litter."

Interesting theory, do you have any citations? It does sound plausible and seems to coincide with my experience in San Francisco (the problem did seem to get somewhat worse after the ban), but maybe that's coincidence or just my anecdotal experience.

Food stamps recipients don’t pay the bag tax, which would make me less inclined to believe that theory. But I don’t know how many of these people are on EBT.

People weren't just using their own bags, they were scavenging bags from the garbage (or the streets—discsrded single use bags were eveeywhere.) Banning designed-as single use bags (and encouraging reuse with a minimum charge per bag) greatly reduced the number of scavengable bags.

> It is a ban of plastic bags from supermarkets.

It's a ban of free or single-use plastic bags from supermarkets; bags must be reusable (with specified strength standards for plastic bags), and there is a minimum charge.

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