New Jersey Bans Plastic Grocery Bags, Plastic Consumption Triples

The Law of Unintended Consequences is still in effect. Law banning plastic bags in blue state backfires as plastic consumption skyrockets - Washington Examiner

Do we ever think that politicians will stop being stupid about the laws they enact? I don't.

New Jersey’s single-use plastic bag ban has proved unsuccessful in curbing plastic consumption, with a new study showing that plastic use has tripled.

Gov. Phil Murphy (D-NJ) signed a bill that set the bag ban into motion in May 2022 in an effort to address plastic pollution, and he said it “will help mitigate climate change.” The ban, which was the strictest of its kind at the time, restricted retail and grocery stores from providing customers with single-use plastic bags and prohibited grocery stores larger than 2,500 square feet from giving customers single-use paper bags.

Since they could no longer give away free, single-use bags, they started selling multiple use bags, which contain more plastic.

However, this surge in reusable bags has created its own sort of environmental problem. For example, to have an alternative grocery bag that has a positive effect on the environment, a cotton bag should be used 7,100 times, according to a report on the lifecycle of reusable bags.

And people were not using cotton bags, but woven and nonwoven polypropylene plastic bags. And they were not reusing them very much.

Grocery stores are happy, because the bags have become a solid income stream.

“Most of these alternative bags are made with nonwoven polypropylene, which is not widely recycled in the United States and does not typically contain any post-consumer recycled materials. This shift in material also resulted in a notable environmental impact, with the increased consumption of polypropylene bags contributing to a 500% increase in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions compared to nonwoven polypropylene bag production in 2015,” the study reported.

So will they admit defeat and repeal the law? Of course not.