Oregon's ban on single-use plastic grocery bags backfired — just as researchers said it would.
Policy should be based on data, not on gut feelings.
In 2019, Oregon passed a law championed by the Surfrider Foundation and Environment Oregon to ban the lightweight single-use shopping bags, and to charge money for paper bags or much heavier reusable shopping bags. Those groups believed it would reduce plastic bag waste in the ocean and in landfills, and reduce carbon emissions from the bags’ manufacturer. But:
Oregon did not actually have a significant problem with plastic bags in the ocean, as the mishandling of municipal waste is almost unheard of in the United States (unlike many other countries), so it was an attempt to solve a nonexistent problem that the groups had not actually researched; and
The ban substantially increased the amount of plastic bags purchased by Oregon supermarkets, measured by weight, and thus the amount of plastic going to landfills. This was exactly what researchers who actually study these things had predicted.
Sure, you will often see trash on the beach. Some people don’t care and leave their picnic junk behind. And you’ll often see trash accumulate in little corners in harbors where stuff always accumulates, and always will. But these two facts do not equal the conclusion that the existence of single-use grocery bags was the problem.
In fact, single-bags bags have the lowest environmental impact of any supermarket checkout option, including the fabric reusable bags, for the simple reason that they contain so little material. Here are the other options compared:
