Sometimes, with the best of intentions, things just don’t work out.
That is far and away the most charitable face I can put on New Jersey’s plastic bag ban, and what it seems top have resulted in.
Here, let me explain by posting excerpts from Emma Colton’s article for Fox News, via msn.com:
Plastic consumption in New Jersey spiked by nearly three times following the state’s implementation of a strict ban on single-use plastic shopping bags, a study found.
“Following New Jersey’s ban of single-use bags, the shift from plastic film to alternative bags resulted in a nearly 3x increase in plastic consumption for bags,” Freedonia Custom Research (FCR), a business research division for MarketResearch.com, reported in a study published this month.
The ban took effect in May 2022, forbidding larger retail, grocery and food service stores from providing single-use plastic bags to customers. Instead, shoppers may purchase reusable bags made of woven and non-woven polypropylene plastic, or can bring their previously-purchased reusable bags to the store.
It didn’t take long, however, until shoppers started airing their grievances to local media that the reusable bags were stacking up in their homes due to repeatedly purchasing reusable bags at the grocery store, or due to home grocery delivery services using new reusable bags each drop-off.
Instead of having the intended beneficial impact on the environment, the reusable bag ban has actually backfired, data reported in the study show. Plastic consumption in the state has nearly tripled, with New Jerseyans previously consuming 53 million pounds of plastic before the ban, compared to 151 million pounds following the ban, FCR researchers reported.
Reusable bags made of non-woven polypropylene are much thicker than the typical single-use plastic bags typically found at grocery and convenience stores, using roughly 15 times the amount of plastic, the study reported. Though the bags are built for repeated shopping trips, most New Jerseyans only reuse the bags two to three times before they’re discarded.
Oops. That wasn’t supposed to happen. But it did.
I commend New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy for his good intentions. But, given the fact that those good intentions have apparently resulted in making a huge problem three times as huge, it seems to me he might want to reconsider his current policy on plastic bags.
I wonder if he has the courage to admit he got it wrong and adjust/revise accordingly.
I guess we’ll soon find out.
