Photo by Adam Muise

Our Plastic Bag Bans Are Completely Dumb

Following in California and New York's footsteps, Hawaii's government banned plastic bags. This was a move that was meant to combat climate change. However, it ended up having the opposite effect. Here's why.

Checking out of a grocery store nowadays has turned into something of a nightmare. Will they have those heavy duty plastic bags for me to use (but have to pay 15 cents for)? Will I have to use paper bags? Will they have bags at all? Why, oh why, did I forget my reusable cotton bag at home again?

This whole bag ban thing is really annoying. And as you'll soon see, it's just a way for our politicians in Hawaii to pat themselves on the back for doing something in the name of climate change. By banning plastic bags, they have done their part to protect our environment, and this makes the radical environmentalists feel good. After all, plastic bad! Paper good. Or so we're told. Wait, what?

Plastic Bags: A Baseline

First, let's establish the baseline here. Why are we so against plastic bags? We're told it's because we don't efficiently recycle them and we do a terrible job of letting them plague our oceans. Every year we create 100 million tons of plastic and 10% of that ends up in the ocean. That's 10 million tons of plastic trash being deposited into the ocean annually. Absolutely horrible.

We use a lot of plastic every year, and far too much of it ends up in the ocean.

That being said, it's worth it to look at the facts first, before simply jumping to the conclusion that we need to ban plastic bags. What are the alternatives? What is the actual impact of plastic bags?

Plastic Bag Re-use

If you're like 100% of the families here in Hawaii, you have a bag of bags. You know what I mean. You go to Foodland, you come back with all of your groceries neatly placed in their plastic bags, and when you're pau putting away all of your groceries, you're left with a pile of 5-20 bags, depending on how many mouths you're feeding.

Then, you throw them all away, right? You just gather 'em up, and toss 'em into the trash. Right?!

WRONG!

Everybody here gathers them up and puts them in the communal bag of bags! That bag where there is a seemingly never-ending stockpile of old plastic bags for re-use. The only variation is the "how" of it all. You either tie the bag into a nice knot or you just shove it in the bag of bags like a madman. There's perpetually 100 or so bags in here because you just can't use them fast enough.

Picking up dog poop? Grab a bag out of the bag of bags. Lining a small trash can? Bag of bags. Going to the beach? Bag of bags for your slippahs and wet clothes after you're done swimming. Packing clothes for a sleep over at your cousin's house? Bag of bags. Packing toiletries? Bag of bags.

Anyway, the point is we all re-use the hell out of these plastic bags. It turns out, the plastic bags are very versatile, easy to store, and fairly strong.

The Alternatives

Banning the plastic bags just forces us to turn elsewhere to get the job done. This is the unintended consequence of banning them.

Garbage bags

As Planet Money found out, by banning plastic bags, we have inadvertently caused garbage bag purchases to increase. A lot. For 4 gallon bags, those small ones you'd use to line the smaller trash cans, they are up a staggering 120%!

Photo by Koko Nakajima and Alyson Hurt/NPR

Not so bad, except when you consider that all of those extra garbage bags being bought use much more plastic than the grocery bags. We've forced everyone to use thicker, heavier garbage bags to line their small garbage bins, and they are far worse for the environment than the supermarket plastic bags.

Your paper bags

Paper or plastic. Those were your options when you checkout at the grocery store. Well, now it's just paper. And boy oh boy paper sure sounds like it'd be better!? Well, that's where you're wrong, kid. You see, paper bags emit much more greenhouse gas than plastic bags do, even after you consider the fact that the paper bags are biodegradable. A study from the UK sought to quantify the difference between the various bags. Here's what they found:

"The study found that... paper... bags should be reused at least 3 times to ensure that they have lower global warming potential than conventional HDPE carrier bags that are not reused"

Photo by Environment Agency, U.K.

*Freeze frame*

*Record scratch*

Paper bags have to be re-used 3 times to be comparable to the plastic grocery bags if the plastic bags are never re-used. And, as we established before, the plastic bags are always reused! And, as we can establish now, nobody ever reuses paper bags! Ever. I have never seen someone do it. Why would you? They're fragile, break easy with a bit of weight, and tear the instant they get wet.

So to make the double paper bag equivalent to the single plastic bag you have to actually re-use them 6 times each, since the plastic bags always get re-used at least once. Math and stuff.

To make matters worse, because of how likely the paper bags are to just spontaneously tear, they always seem to be double bagged by clerks to ensure you can get your groceries home without them exploding all over the ground. Double win for plastic here.

Moving on...

Photo by Kevin Grieve

Tote bags

So paper is worse than plastic. We can just use the cotton tote bags that they sell at the checkout for $19.95 a pop and we'll be better off than using plastic, right? Common sense would say yes, but actual sense says no. The tote bags are even worse. Way worse. Like, way, way, way worse.

That same study from above found that the cotton tote bags would have to be re-used 131 times before being equivalent to a single plastic bag. And this is only considering the 'global warming' potential. A separate study by the Danish government looked at more than just the greenhouse gas emissions, such as water use, damage to ecosystems, and air pollution. They found that the cloth bags would need to be re-used 20,000 times before it is equivalent environmentally to a single plastic grocery bag (page 17, table below for reference):

Photo by Ministry of Environment and Food of Denmark

20,000 times. In my entire life, I don't think I've even been to the grocery store that many times. I'll never look at those tote bags the same again. Thank you Denmark.

Important Note

Because I aim to be honest with facts, it's very important to note that the above comparisons of paper, garbage, and tote bags to the plastic bags are just in their overall impact on global warming/climate change/the environment.

Tote bags and paper bags are much better for the environment when it comes to preventing litter.

For starters, they are both very biodegradable. The tote bags also last much longer, so there is just less of it in our trash. Plastics are much worse when it comes to litter. And to that end, the bans may make a difference. But to the overall environment, the plastic bag bans are terrible.

With that said...

The bans are merely a means for politicians to score easy wins with environmentalists and "look at me" points when they vote in support of the measures. While the litter is certainly a big problem, I think we should address the actual problem -- litter -- like The Ocean Cleanup project recently did. Banning the plastic bags do little to solve the litter issue, especially when you consider that most of the plastics in the ocean come from developing nations, not from us.

It's a classic case of unintended consequences, whereby the government does something perceived as "noble" only for us to find out afterwards that it doesn't improve the situation.

Why would the geniuses in our state/county congress continue to push for such idiotic changes? It's not because they are dumb -- although, they are dumb. It's because their primary aim once they are in office is to gain enough brownie points with their constituents that they get re-elected.

The average person doesn't know any of facts the above. In fact, a lot of it is counter-intuitive. Even I, the writer of this article, didn't really know the facts until about a month ago. Paper and tote bags worse than plastic? I mean, c'mon, that just doesn't make sense. I didn't think hard enough on it. I just assumed that plastic was the worse, just like any other person would. And paper and tote bags actually are better when it comes to litter in our ocean.

To the average person, banning plastic bags just makes sense. Intuitively. So, while we are annoyed that we can't re-use the old grocery bags, ultimately we don't care and just reach for the alternatives. But to environmentalists, this was a huge win (even though it was a net loss to the global climate). To them, the politicians supporting the ban gained huge points.

Moral of the story? Everything is not as it seems, except for our local government. They really are that retar-- I mean, stupid.

Photo by Tulsi Gabbard