by Katy Grimes, E&E Legal Senior Media Fellow and California Globe Editor
As Appearing in the California Globe
A ‘statewide poll’ on plastic pollution in 2022, used a sampling of 379 California residents
California Governor Gavin Newsom, who signed the first plastic bag ban in the country in 2007, to no avail, just signed a total plastic bag ban Sunday.
“Hi Katy!”
“Great news: Governor Newsom just signed SB 1053 into law, which means California has banned thick single-use plastic film bags from grocery and convenience store checkouts across the state!” announced Oceana.org in an email Sunday.
Oceana is “the largest international advocacy organization dedicated solely to ocean conservation.”
Except banning plastic grocery bags does not reduce disposal and recycling costs, numerous studies have shown.
The United Nations Environment Programme demonstrated that merely reusing bags repeatedly significantly lowers their environmental impact.
University of Sydney economist Rebecca Taylor discovered that people who reused their shopping bags for other purposes, like picking up dog poop or lining trash bins, still needed bags. “What I found was that sales of garbage bags actually skyrocketed after plastic grocery bags were banned,” she says. This was particularly the case for small, 4-gallon bags, which saw a 120 percent increase in sales after bans went into effect,” NPR reported.
