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Comment by vippy | Hacker News Reader

I don't know where you live, but I see many fewer plastic bags drifting like so many tumbleweeds since the imposition of plastic bag fees and taxes where I live.

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Sure, but the stated purpose of these bans was not to reduce the number of plastic bags we see, it was to reduce plastic pollution. That would make you think that plastic bags were the most important source of post-consumer plastic pollution, which they aren't — plastic packaging is. For marine microplastics ("the pacific garbage patch") the main sources are things like textiles, car tires, and of course fishing nets.

The thinking seems to be "well, it would be hard to eliminate those sources, so let's make it so you don't see as many plastic garbage bags drifting around, and it'll look like we did something meaningful."

It seems to have absolutely reduced urban plastic pollution. I'd call it a win.

My town banned single-use plastic bags and I went from picking 1-2 out of my yard every week to pretty much zero immediately. It definitely didn’t solve every problem, but I agree it definitely made a problem a lot better.

Half measures still do _something_

They did reduce plastic pollution, as you admit.

Was it the most effective regulation to pass to reduce plastic pollution by the greatest possible amount? Not at all

They're often counterproductive. People feel accomplished, and finished with the half-measures and they often don't bother investigating the results or the ongoing requirements.

I'm not sure that this is true. Maybe you could give some evidence that this is the most common outcome.

The evidence is that the major sources of plastic pollution were not put under further regulation subsequent to the regulation of this minor source of plastic pollution, even though the threat they present has not diminished.

It's an article of faith for people in the libertarian climate change denial community, because they get funded by the people who sell the natural gas that is used to make them:

https://reason.com/tag/plastic-bags/

https://reason.com/tag/straws/

Just a quick glance at those links shows they are just a little obsessed about this.

I was visiting San Diego soon after the fees went into effect and they were dealing with a cholera outbreak because the homeless no longer had plastic bags to defecate into. So you have a miniscule effect on plastic pollution in exchange for a large effect in a different area.

The solution to this is to provide bathrooms, not plastic bags.

This is not salient, it's like saying "when I removed pressure from the wound, the patient started bleeding out. Therefore removing pressure is bad and to fix the wound we should ask Re apply pressure" The pressure is a stopgap, you need to address the underlying problem (in this case by ensuring adequate bathrooms) rather than simply reacting to the surface level concern.

That is a wild unindented consequence.

That's likely true, but what change has been made in the total volume of plastic waste produced in the area? Possibly/probably very little.

It's an example of doing something easy and visibly noticable, but ultimately inconsequential, to create the illusion of solving a problem.

In Australia, when they did a plastic bag ban, the total volume of plastic waste actually went up. Instead of using flimsy grocery bags for their household trash, people were now using thicker dedicated trash bags. Those thin bags are some of the most re-used plastic out there.

Yep same in New Zealand, as much as I hate it we now buy dedicated bin bags for our kitchen bin and others as it works the best for our flat. In the past this was never an issue.

However, urban plastic pollution has definitely decreased. We do often now have an excess of paper bags in our house as people tend to forget their reusable bags and we don't have as many uses for the paper ones. At least they can be recycled.

The problem is the carbon footprint. Those paper bags have the carbon footprint of 5-10 plastic bags. Re-usable bags, depending on the material, are 200-1000 plastic bags worth of carbon.

Our dedicated trash bags are thinner than what used to be in the store for your groceries.

This is a great example of regulations that feel good but are probably net negative. Paper bags require more energy and are worse for the environment than plastic bags on net [0][1]. Reusable bags are improperly sanitized and typically quite dirty, something that was pretty relevant in 2020 (and theoretically going forward). [2]

[0]: https://ecomyths.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/scho0711buan...

[1]: https://cascade.uoregon.edu/fall2012/expert/expert-article/

[2]: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-plastic-bag-ban-backfires-1...

Walking down the street a few days ago I saw someone had put out an entire trash bag full of reusable bags.

Me too, but I'm not aware of any fees for bags at the stores.

You must not live in California..

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