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SIDE EFFECTS OF SINGLE-USE PLASTIC BAG BAN
Ximan Wu
Dr. Richard Matzen
WRIT112: Essay three
November 30, 2014
Side Effects of Single-Use Plastic Bag Ban
Introduction
Perhaps one of the greatest inventions of human kind in contemporary history is singleuse plastic bags, the bags that make shopping and transportation of goods a lot easier. Yet, as
demand for single-use plastic bag increased with population, people began to realize the
environmental problems that arose with single-use plastic bags, such as the long decomposing
period for these bags and pollution that came along with the disposal of these bags. As a result,
the Californian Governor signed SB 270, making California the first state to prohibit stores from
providing free single-use plastic bags effective July, 2015 for large chain stores and January,
2016 for all the stores, according to the Time article California Becomes First State to Ban
Plastic Bags (Steinmetz, 2014).
Of course, Californians’ reaction to this bill is bipolar. Environmentalists cheer for
Governor Jerry Brown for signing this bill, while those who hold opposing view or use these
single-use plastic bags for other purposes, such as myself, are disappointed at the Governor’s
decision. In this essay, I will discuss the problems this bill brings, such as the negative effects on
the environment and performance inefficiency of alternative options, and then offer some
feasible solutions: requiring consumers to reuse their plastic bags as trash bags, requiring
manufactures to incorporate biodegradable technology to these disposable shopping bags and
requiring government to build corresponding facilities to facilitate these biodegradable bags.
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SIDE EFFECTS OF SINGLE-USE PLASTIC BAG BAN
The Problem
According to European Plastic News (EPN)(2008), a news source for European plastic
industry, single-use plastic bags can be dated as early as the 1950s, but at that time, single-use
plastic bags were for industrial use instead of commercial use. Popularity of single-use plastic
bags bloomed after 1965, after Swedish engineer Sten Gustaf Thulin designed and manufactured
the world’s first lightweight and durable single-use plastic bags. (EPN, 2008) Some people
blame Thulin for his invention that ended up polluting Earth’s precious water sources and
endangering countless organisms living in those bodies of water while others praise him for
making grocery shopping and transportation of goods easier. As a result, in order to protect the
environment and please the environmentalists of California, Governor Jerry Brown signed SB
270 on September 30, 2014 and made California the first state to ban plastic bags.
The major argument from the ban supporters is that banning single-use plastic bags will
help protect the environment, but it is not true. According to the 2011 United Kingdom’s
Environment Agency report Life Cycle Assessment of Supermarket Carrier Bags: a review of the
bags available in 2006, “the environmental impact of all types of carrier bag is dominated by
resource use and production stages… end-of-life management generally have a minimal
influence on their performance.” (UK Environment Agency [EA], 2011) This means that
however people choose to dispose of the single-use plastic bags do not affect the environment as
much as the production process, as equivalent amount of pollutions are made to make alternative
options. As a result, the Governor’s effort to protect the environment is not as sustainable as he
thinks, and will result in further pollution and cause more harm to our ecosystem. As well, in
order to prep the materials to make paper bags, an alternative option for plastic bags, chemicals
must be used to process both recycled paper and raw materials; these chemicals often find their
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SIDE EFFECTS OF SINGLE-USE PLASTIC BAG BAN
way into the environment, damaging the environment and the ecosystems within, and that is one
of the side effects SB270 will bring.
Furthermore, banning plastic bags will force consumers to switch to paper bags, result in
intensification of global warming. As seen from the 2010 Los Angeles County Draft
Environmental Impact Report- Ordinance to Ban Plastic Carryout Bags in Los Angeles County,
around 85% of Californians would switch to paper bags instead of buying their own reusable
grocery bags. The switch from disposal plastic bags to paper bags would also contribute to global
warming by producing equivalent amount of greenhouse gases as having 550,000 more cars on
the road annually. (County of Los Angeles Department of Public Works [DPW], 2010) This
government report indicates that majority of the population in California would choose to buy
paper bags every time they go to the stores instead of bringing their own reusable grocery bags,
as population’s behavior is hard to be changed without a strong incentive. The government’s
reckless ban on plastic bags and switching to paper bags would produce more pollution and
exacerbate global warming, resulting in the exact opposite effect.
In addition to worsening existing pollutions, studies also suggest reusing single-use
plastic bags as trash bags is more sustainable than switching to paper bags or plastic multi-use
shopping bags. According to Environment Agency’s report, “the reuse of conventional HDPE
(the material mostly used in today’s plastic bags) and other lightweight carrier bags (single-use
plastic bags) for shopping and/ or as bin-liners is pivotal to their environmental performance and
reuse as bin liners produces greater benefits than recycling bags.” (EA, 2011) This indicates that
reusing single-use plastic bags as trash bags has more benefit compared to recycling them. Yet,
perhaps the reason why people perceive single-use plastic bags negatively is because majority of
the people dispose of them in the wrong way. In my survey, 80% of the surveyed answered they
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SIDE EFFECTS OF SINGLE-USE PLASTIC BAG BAN
recycle their single-use plastic bags while only 20% of the surveyed answered they use those
bags as trash bags. We are taught to reduce, reuse, and recycle for all recyclable materials, but
for single-use plastic bags, we should try to reuse them to their full potential. The fact that people
choose to recycle these single-use plastic bags instead of reuse them as trash bags is the biggest
contributor to the problem.
In compliance with the Environment Agency report on why single-use plastic bags
should not be banned, an investigation done by Wall Street Journal six years later also indicates
that “…average supermarket shoppers would have to reuse the same multi-use bags from 94 up
to 1,889 times before it had less environmental impact than the disposable plastic bags needed to
carry the same amount of groceries.” (Agresti, 2012) This means that in order to balance the
resources used and environmental impacts caused to make one single reusable shopping bag, an
average person must use his or her reusable bag at least 94 times. A multi-use shopping bag is
impossible to be reused hundreds of times, as they are often broken or thrown away before their
performance out weight the environmental pollution caused to produce them.
As seen from the previous two governmental researches, banning single-use plastic bags
is not the way to protect the environment; switching from single-use plastic to other materials
requires more resources to manufacture and produces more pollution, and the way people
dispose of their single-use plastic bags are not environmental friendly nor sustainable at all.
Solution
The problem with the plastic bag ban is that it is not going to return the desired result we
look for. Therefore, I propose two solutions to reduce environmental impact of single-use plastic
bags: encourage Californians to reuse the existing single-use plastic bags as trash bags and
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requiring manufactures to incorporate single-use plastic bags to be made of biodegradable
materials and have corresponding facilities to properly treat these materials.
My first solution is simple: educate and encourage Californians to reuse the existing
single-use plastic bags. One way for this solution to work is to encourage Californians to reuse
their single-use plastic bags as trash bags. Californians buy rolls of big plastic trash bags at
grocery stores in order to dispose of their trash; these big plastic trash bags are built thicker and
require longer time to degrade and be decomposed compared to single-use plastic bags. Since the
major problem with plastic bags is their long decomposing and degrading period, using thinner
and smaller single-use plastic bags that are easier to degrade and decompose would be a good
way to reduce pollution and environmental impact of plastic bags.
Another benefit of reusing single-use plastic bags as trash bags is it avoids the necessity
of producing trash bags. For instance, as seen in Table 1, the average amount of plastic bags
consumed per family in 4 trips to the grocery store is 60 bags per household. (Earth 911, 2012)
In four trips, an average household would have 60 single-use plastic bags to use as trash bags; by
using these 60 grocery bags as trash bags, the need for rolls of big plastic trash bags will be
eliminated, less resources will be used, which will also reduce the pollutions occurred during the
manufacturing process of large trash bags.
Plastic Statistics
Total number of plastic bags used worldwide annually
1 trillion
Total number of plastic bags China consumes everyday
3 billion
Total number of plastic bags used every minute
1 million
Total number of years it takes for a plastic bag to degrade
1,000 years
Total amount of plastic bags that were discarded in 2008
3.5 million tons
Total amount of plastic floating in every square mile of ocean
46,000 pieces
Average amount of plastic bags consumed per family in 4 trips to the
grocery store
60
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Percent of plastic made every year that will end up in the ocean
10%
Total amount of plastic bags used by U.S. citizens every year
100 billion
Average amount of plastic bottles a U.S. household will use each year
500 plastic
bottles
Percent of household waste that is plastic
11%
Table 1: Plastic usage statistics around the world, showing how many plastic bags are used by
consumers around the world per year and the percentage of plastics being improperly discarded
(Earth 911, 2012)
Some may argue that the sizes of single-use plastic bags are too small for household use,
and therefore, single-use plastic bags are not suitable to be used as trash bags. They argue that
their trash bins around their houses come in different sizes, and that they need to buy the correct
sized bags for each bin. For those oppose using single-use plastic bags as trash bags, I think they
need to replace their big trash bins to smaller ones, and learn to reduce the amount of trash they
produce and recycle their recyclable waste. This way, they will reduce the amount of plastic bags
they use, reduce the amount of trash they produce, and recycle every bit of recyclable material.
My second solution to solve the problems of plastic bag ban is requiring manufactures to
produce plastic bags that are biodegradable or self-degradable, as these materials are easier to
degrade and do not pose as a threat to the environment compared to non-biodegradable materials
and majority of the people recycle their disposal plastic bags instead of reusing them. For
instance, I once left my empty self-degradable Slurpee cup in my room under direct sunlight;
when I was cleaning my room a month later I noticed the cup had begun its degrading process
but there was no sign of residuals anywhere. I learned that biodegradable plastics are not as rare
as I thought, and I think that similar technology and materials can be used to manufacture plastic
bags, making the bags not a threat to the environment anymore. Furthermore, currently there is
no biodegradable plastic treatment plant in Los Angeles that can treat biodegradable plastic.
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(DPW, 2010) To match the recycling habits of the majority population, I believe corresponding
facilities should be built.
Some people believe the disposal of plastic bags is the major contributor to the plastic
pollutions, and I believe reusing disposal bags as trash bags and switching from nonbiodegradable and non-self-degradable plastic bags to biodegradable bags would solve the
disposal problem and help protect the environment better than switching to paper bags or multiuse shopping bags that require more resources and cause more pollutions to produce.
Conclusion
Banning single-use plastic bags may seem like the solution to the problem of single-use
plastic bag pollution, but advocates of such ban ignore the fact that compared to the alternate
solutions they proposed, such as switching to multi-use grocery bags or paper bags, single-use
plastic bags is still the most efficient way of resource use and the most sustainable way of
finding the balance between convenience and environment protection. SB 270, the bill Governor
Brown signed to force people to switching to multi-use bags or paper bags will have unintended
consequences, such as intensification of global warming and pollution. As a result, I propose two
alternative solutions to the problems the plastic bag ban brings: reuse these disposable bags as
trash bags, and incorporating biodegradable or self-degradable technology in the disposal bags as
well as building corresponding facilities to accommodate these new bags.
Let us solve the problem of plastic pollution from the root, not by creating another
problem or intensifying existing environmental concerns like SB 270 does.
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SIDE EFFECTS OF SINGLE-USE PLASTIC BAG BAN
References
Aggarwal, P., Agrawal, R., & Damija, P. (n.d.). Interactive Environmental Educatiaon Book VIII
(Vol. 8). Pitambar Publishing.
Agresti, J. (2012, June 15). Bans on Plastic Bags Harm the Environment. Retrieved November
13, 2014, from
http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303822204577468790467880880
County of Los Angeles Department of Public Works. (2010). Ordinance to Ban Plastic Carryout
Bags In Los Angeles County. Draft Environmental Impact Report.
Earth 911. (2012, April 21). Plastic Bag Statistics. Retrieved November 13, 2014, from
http://www.statisticbrain.com/plastic-bag-statistics/
Edwards, C., & Fry, J. (2011). Life cycle assessment of supermarket carrier bags: A review of
the bags available in 2006.
European Plastics News. (2008, September 26). Retrieved November 10, 2014, from
http://www.europeanplasticsnews.com/subscriber/newscat2.html?cat=&channel=500&id
=1222446525
Steinmetz, K. (2014, September 30). California Becomes First State to Ban Plastic Bags.
Retrieved November 10, 2014, from http://time.com/3449887/california-plastic-bag-ban/