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Global Success Stories in Plastic Bag Pollution Control

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Global Success Stories in Plastic Bag Pollution Control

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California: Statewide Ban and Fee

Implemented a statewide ban on plastic bags.

Added a 10-cent fee for reusable or paper bags.

Achieved a 72% reduction in plastic litter in one year (coastal clean-ups).

Ireland: Financial Motivation through Plastax

Introduced a 15-cent tax on plastic bags in 2002, later increased to 22 cents.

Reduced usage from 328 bags per person/year to 21 bags per person/year.

Demonstrated the effectiveness of financial incentives on consumer behavior.

Kenya: Strict Ban with Broad Impact

Enacted one of the world’s strictest bans in 2017.

Prohibited the manufacturing and importation of plastic bags.

Resulted in an 80% drop in plastic trash within a few years.

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Supply and Demand Mechanics:

Definition: Supply and demand determine the market price and quantity of goods. When supply decreases and demand remains constant, prices increases, and vice versa.

California: The ban on plastic bags reduced their supply, forcing consumers and retailers to shift to alternatives like paper or reusable bags. This increased the demand and prices for substitutes because of supply constraints.

Kenya: A similar reduction in supply led to high demand for plastic bags, creating a black market where illegal bags are smuggled and sold.

Ireland: Instead of banning, they imposed a levy, reducing demand for plastic bags without directly banning the supply or consumption.

Elasticity of Demand:

Definition: Measures how responsive consumers are to changes in price. If demand is elastic, a small price change significantly affects quantity demanded. If inelastic, demand remains stable even with price changes.

California: For a lot of the consumers, alternatives like reusable bags were relatively elastic because they could easily adapt, but some low-income consumers faced inelastic demand because of the limited options and increased prices

Kenya: Demand for plastic bags was inelastic among the consumers who relied on them, leading to resistance and reliance on illegal markets.

Ireland: Demand was elastic; a small levy encouraged consumers to switch to reusable bags without lots of inconvenience (levy not direct ban).

Externalities:

Definition: Costs or benefits of a good or service that affect third parties and are not reflected in its price.

California: The ban tried to address the negative externality of pollution by reducing plastic waste. However, there were unintended consequences, like increased use of thicker plastic bags marketed as reusable but not actually, leading to more waste than prior.

Kenya: Aimed to mitigate severe environmental pollution and harm to livestock caused by plastic bags. But because of the direct ban, smuggling and illegal use increased the negative externalities.

Ireland: Successfully internalized externalities by reducing plastic waste through a levy, encouraging behavior change without a lot of unintended consequences.

Price Controls:

Definition: Government-imposed limits on how high or low a price can go (price ceilings or price floors).

California: The ban acted as a de facto restriction on the "price" of plastic bags by removing them from the legal market, and increasing the cost of alternatives.

Kenya: Implicitly set a "ceiling" by banning plastic bags, but illegal markets introduced higher costs for those who could pay.

Ireland: The levy operated like a price floor, ensuring consumers faced higher costs for single-use bags, and therefore incentivizing reusable alternatives, without directly banning.

Behavioral Economics:

Definition: Examines how psychological factors influence economic decisions.

California: Consumers responded to the ban by purchasing more plastic trash bags, showing the behavioral tendency to substitute similar goods.

Kenya: There was behavioral resistance to the ban because consumers and businesses bought cheaper, more convenient options.

Ireland: Leveraging small price incentives (levy) effectively influenced consumer behavior to reduce plastic bag usage.

Market Failures:

Definition: Situations where the free market fails to allocate resources efficiently, often justifying government intervention.

California: The ban aimed to correct the market failure of environmental damage caused by plastic bag use.

Kenya: Severe environmental damage justified the government’s stringent ban, but there were enforcement challenges.

Ireland: The levy effectively addressed market failure by pricing the negative externalities of plastic bag use.

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Which economic concept do you think most influences the success of plastic bag bans?

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Ten years after California approved a plastic bag ban that's been blamed for making its plastic bag problem worse, the state is banning single-use plastic grocery bags entirely.

In 2014, California became the first state to pass a plastic bag ban. It's one of at least 12 states that now have some form of ban on single-use plastic bags.

But because of a loophole in its initial ban that allowed grocers to charge for thicker plastic bags, California still dumped 231,072 tons of plastic grocery and merchandise bags in landfills in 2021, according to the state's recycling agency, CalRecycle. That was a sharp increase from the year the ban took effect - and nearly 100,000 more tons than in 2018.

California officials are saying that there's a perception that plastics - especially plastic bags - can be easily recycled. But they say that this is not the reality and that consumers have been deceived for decades.

"CalRecycle has not identified facilities that recycle plastic bags in the state of California," the agency told NPR this week.

The state filed a suit on Sunday alleging that ExxonMobil promoted recycling while knowing that it was technically and economically challenging and wouldn't make much of a dent in the plastic waste problem.

Here's a rundown of California's new ban and similar measures:

Why did California's initial bag ban backfire?

The state's ban on thin single-use bags had a loophole that let grocers sell shoppers thicker plastic bags for a small fee: just 10 cents. In theory, the heavier bags were reusable. But in practice, they became a more substantial form of waste.

"A plastic bag has an average lifespan of 12 minutes and then it is discarded, afflicting our environment with toxic microplastics that fester in our oceans and landfills for up to 1,000 years," Sen. Catherine Blakespear, an author of the new ban, said in a news release issued after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the ban into law on Sunday.

The initial ban was also undermined by the COVID-19 pandemic. When it was still unknown how the coronavirus spread, shoppers were barred from bringing reusable bags into grocery stores out of fear that their bags might be contaminated.

"California kind of took one for the team as the first to pass a statewide ban on plastic bags," Melissa Valliant, communications director for the advocacy group Beyond Plastics, told NPR. "It ended up providing a lesson for other state and even local governments to learn from and to not allow loopholes like thicker plastic bags."

What does the new California law do?

Starting on Jan. 1, 2026, customers at most grocery stores, convenience stores, and other retailers will have three main options: Pay at least 10 cents for a paper bag; use a reusable bag; or hand-carry their purchase.

"Stores may offer paper bags at the point-of-sale, and they can also sell the canvas-style reusable bags in other areas of the store," Nate Rose of the California Grocers Association, which supports the new ban, told NPR.

"These are the bags many shoppers are already accustomed to bringing with them to carry their groceries," Rose added.

And starting in 2028, stores' paper bags will be required to be composed of at least 50% postconsumer recycled materials.

More than 70 organizations supported the legislation, member station LAist reports, saying it "would prevent plastic waste, which releases toxic chemicals into the air, water and soil."

What's so bad about plastic bags?

Despite industry claims about their recyclability, the thin bags are notoriously difficult and expensive to process and recycle. Instead, they often wind up in landfills, where they will persist for centuries, or in incinerators.

For a sense of the scale of the problem, consider Philadelphia. An evaluation commissioned by the city said last year that in Philadelphia, "an estimated 1 billion single-use disposable plastic bags are used annually," adding to waste, litter and emissions challenges.

Municipal systems, the evaluation stated, "are unable to recycle plastic bags and the soft material causes equipment jamming at recycling centers, leading to dangerous and costly repairs that account for 150 hours of lost staff time and $300,000 in city costs."

In contrast, restrictions like bag bans "can be expected to eliminate almost 300 single-use plastic bags per person per year, on average," according to an analysis by Environment America and the U.S. PIRG Education Fund that was published in January.

What does the plastic industry say?

Bag manufacturers are against bans on their products and they insist that the thin plastic film bag, made of polyethylene, makes more sense than the alternatives.

"A polyethylene bag is 100% recyclable and can be recycled into itself, is produced with low carbon emissions, and the PE is made domestically from natural gas," a general manager of bag supplier Crown Poly said in a 2023 report prepared by Freedonia Custom Research on behalf of an industry group, the American Recyclable Plastic Bag Alliance.

"Conversely, PP [polypropylene] bags are produced overseas and imported, produce higher emissions than film bags, and are not recyclable. In fact, 99% of PP is virgin and does not contain post-consumer recycled material," the report states.

Note: While single-use bags can technically be recycled, it's not an easy or cost-effective process.

"To the extent they get recycled, a lot of polyethylene plastics get turned into low-grade materials. You can't take a plastic bag and then make another plastic bag with the same properties out of it," chemistry researcher John Hartwig of the University of California, Berkeley said in 2022, as he worked on ways to reuse the ubiquitous material.

The American Recyclable Plastic Bag Alliance and another industry group, the Plastics Industry Association, did not respond to NPR's request for comment on the new California ban before this story was published.

Should people just use paper bags?

When bans on single-use plastic bags haven't also included a fee on paper bags, their use has soared. In Portland, Ore., for instance, paper bag use shot up by nearly 500% after the city enacted a ban (and before the state imposed its own ban with a fee for paper alternatives).

A similar dynamic has played out in Philadelphia, where the proportion of supermarket shoppers using at least one paper bag tripled after a plastic-bag ban took effect without a fee for paper. A recent bid to tack on a 15-cent fee for paper bags was axed by a pocket veto.

Paper bags are easier to recycle than plastic, and more degradable. But environmental advocates want retailers and shoppers to move away from single-use bags of any type. They argue that a few minutes of convenience isn't enough to justify cumbersome networks of bag collection, processing and production needed to recycle single-use bags.

"The whole goal is to get people to switch from disposable options - especially plastic, but disposable options altogether - to reusable and refillable options," Valliant said. "Because ultimately that is going to be the most sustainable and the best for both environment and human health."

Which 12 states have banned plastic bags?

In 2024, Colorado and Rhode Island enacted statewide bans on single-use plastic bags, joining 10 states that already had restrictions in place: California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Vermont and Washington.

At their core, such bans are attempts to shift responsibility for plastic waste from consumers upstream - to retailers and, by extension, plastic producers.

The same week California's new ban became law, the state opened another front in its battle with plastic waste by filing a lawsuit against oil and gas giant ExxonMobil, a leading producer of the polymers used to make single-use plastics.

"For decades, ExxonMobil has been deceiving the public to convince us that plastic recycling could solve the plastic waste and pollution crisis when they clearly knew this wasn't possible," California Attorney General Rob Bonta said.

Bonta accused ExxonMobil of profiting from "convincing consumers that they were responsible for the proliferation of plastic waste through their own personal habits, rather than through Mobil's and Exxon's efforts to produce an increasing number of plastic products designed for single-use."

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California's first plastic bag ban made things worse. Now it's trying again

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California and other states - and some cities - have learned a lesson: Bans on plastic bags don't always go as planned. In fact, California's original ban made things worse.

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Dublin introduces ban on businesses presenting waste in plastic bags

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Dublin City Council in the Republic of Ireland has announced a new measure prohibiting businesses from presenting their waste in plastic bags, Dublin Live reported.

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The banned bags are back.

In 2017, Kenya passed a law banning single-use plastic bags - the kind that grocery stores and other vendors give you to hold your purchases. The law was inspired by the toll of plastic pollution. The bags used to package food and other products were exempted.

A ban with purpose - and teeth

It was hailed as a ground-breaking law by other countries and even the United Nations. When people toss the bags, they create all sorts of problems. They clog drainage systems. In dumps, where trash is sometimes burned, they release toxins. They end up in rivers and streams. And like all plastic detritus, they degrade into microplastics, which scientists have found in the bloodstreams of fish and humans as well. Although no definitive impacts of microplastics on animal and human health have been established, studies have raised concerns about possible harm.

The bags also pose a threat to livestock. Goats and other grazers sometimes eat the bags as they look for fodder in the semi-arid landscape, bringing on digestive blockage and even death.

The law came with stiff penalties. Violators - both businesses and consumers - could face a jail term of up to four years or a fine of $4 million Kenyan shillings - about $28,000.

At first, the ban worked well. People were afraid of getting caught. And those who were caught did pay a price. In 2018, for instance, 18 vendors and other businesspeople who pleaded guilty in court in the Kenyan coastal city of Mombasa were either fined $300 or sentenced to eight months in jail for using single-use plastic bags.

But in 2023, the colorful, single-use plastic bags are piling up in the Dadach Boshe dump, which serves Marsabit County, with a population of about half a million. What's more, as strong winds send the bags flying. They catch on tree branches and land in patches of grass, where grazing animals might find them.

Since Kenya's bag manufacturers stopped producing bags due to the ban, the question looms: Where are the bags coming from?

Bag smugglers

Turns out that they're smuggled into Kenya from its neighbors - and not just in Marsabit county.

"The plastic bags originate from the neighboring country of Ethiopia and other countries that have not embraced the ban on plastic use," says Naphtali Osoro, the county director at the National Environment Management Authority (NEMA) in Marsabit. At the border of Kenya and Ethiopia, he says, traders smuggle single-use plastic bags into Kenya - sometimes concealing them within shipments of plastic that is used for packaging products and is exempt from the ban. And then the bags are sold for use at local markets.

Enforcers say Uganda is another source of the smuggled bags.

"That is why it is difficult to manage the ban in Kenya," says Dorothy Otieno, programs officer at Kenya's Centre for Environmental Justice and Development. "Manufacturers [of plastic bags] moved to other countries but still have connections with Kenya, so they smuggle the bags into the country" to boost their business.

Abdullahi Ismael, chief officer of Environment and Climate Change in Marsabit County, explains why the bags are able to enter the country. "There is a reluctance in enforcing that law at the border," he says. "It should be a mandate [for] security agents at the border, but we need to sensitize people about the environmental impacts of those single-use plastic bags."

He promises action. "We intend to call the county environmental management committee soon for a meeting and one of the agendas is to discuss the plastic bags issue and where we went wrong on the ban," he says.

It's not been easy to nab the bag smugglers, he adds.

"There should be a collective effort from NEMA, security agencies and the county and national government to control the entry of plastic bags."

Some shoppers now hide their plastic bags in shopping bags made of acceptable materials like cloth, says Steve Itela, CEO of Conservation Alliance in Kenya. And others feel there are just so many people now using the bags that enforcing the ban in markets is impossible.

At a local market, a vegetable vendor told me that "the bags are in circulation, but it seems that the law enforcers are relaxed to do the job of eradicating them."Goat owners are among those who bemoan the proliferation of bags.

Trouble for goats

Golompo Duba, who lives about a mile and a quarter from the dump, had a flock of 150 goats. A number of the goats had suffered from bloated bellies. When he slaughtered some of them for food, he found plastic bags in their stomachs. He also says that some of his goats with swollen stomachs died, and he now believes that the reason for their condition was the inadvertent consumption of plastic bags as they searched for vegetation to consume.

Stanley Sakimpa, a veterinarian in Nairobi, confirms that plastic bags ingestion can be fatal to goats and cows - although not as risky for donkeys. "Goats and cattle have four [compartments in their] stomachs, the rumen, reticulum, omasum and abomasum, but donkeys have one like humans, which makes it easier for them to defecate the ingested bags. In goats and cows, the bags remain in the stomach lining making it difficult for fodder or pasture to move through the four stomachs [compartments]. These plastic bags then cause blockage and eventually death," he says.

He added that animals that lack ample grazing material will eat plastic bags. He says he has seen such cases in his work.

Duba himself went to a veterinarian for advice. He was told to give the goats salty water to reduce the swelling and aid in defecation. That did not help. Between the bags and the drought, Duba lost his entire herd and now works as a low-paid gravel crusher - crushing and selling it to constructors at a very low price.

Some area residents have similar stories of losing goats to plastic bag consumption, although no one is tracking just how many have died. Fatuma Molu, a fellow gravel crusher, says many find livestock owners find it pointless to speak out about the problem because they think no action will be taken. She adds that the goat owners try as much as possible to keep them from grazing around the dump site.

A government promise of action

The government is committed to enforcing the ban. In Nairobi County, Governor Johnson Sakaja took on this issue in a speech he gave on Kenya's Labour Day, May 1. He promised to crack down on single-use plastic bags (which he referred to as "plastic paper bags"): "Plastic paper bags were banned, but they have come back. In a week we are going to launch an operation to make sure that plastic paper bags are no longer in our markets because they are the ones clogging our drainage," he said.

The crackdown on smugglers who bring in bags has yet to take place. And so the bags continue to pile up at the Dadach Boshe dump. When men and boys head to the dump to collect plastic bottles and scrap metal to sell, they set fires to reduce the load of rubbish - which results in toxins in the air from the burning plastic bags.

But one group of dump visitors seem oblivious to the bag pileup. On a recent day, several baboons came looking for snacks. They ignored the bags and focused on rotting avocadoes.
Based in Kenya, Scovian Lillian is a science and health freelance journalist with a focus on Africa. She covers higher education, women's empowerment, human rights, persons with disabilities, climate change and the environment. Her articles have been published by The Continent, Nature Africa, Democracy in Africa, Talk Africa, The Mail & Guardian, SciDev.net (Sub-Saharan Africa), Technology and Innovation and University World News.

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The toughest plastic bag ban is failing: A tale of smugglers, dumps and dying goats

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Kenya was hailed for its decision to outlaw single use plastic bags in 2016, with remarkably hefty penalties. So why are the bags back in stores, piling up in dumps - and being ingested by livestock?

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The unintended consequences of plastic bag bans

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A huge increase in the use of paper bags, together with an observed uptick in the purchase of plastic trash bags, means banning plastic shopping bags actually i

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Plastic bag bans have lingering impacts, even after repeals

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Regulations imposed to protect the environment may continue to have impacts even after they are repealed. And those lingering impacts include some that run contrary to the goals of the policies.

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Changes in consumer behavior

Supply and demand regarding plastic bags, along with the possible replacement bags, will both be impacted.

Supply and demand for plastic bags will drop very low, hurting the economic market

Demand will skyrocket for reusable bags, garbage bags, etc., as companies will have to massively increase supply to accommodate the demand.

Low-income homes are negatively impacted financially

Families are to pay more than $7.70 for plastic bag substitutions going forward (stat from 2013, so the number is higher given inflation).

Loss of plastic-making jobs

People in plastic manufacturing factories will be under stress and possibly unemployment due to the massive decrease in demand for plastics.

Plastic bag ban threatens over 1,800 jobs in California alone.

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The plastic bag ban has been introduced across the globe as a policy measure to address the problems associated with single-use plastic.

The restriction’s main objective focuses on reducing the impact of plastic waste on the environment, the marine life, and human health.

At the same time the bans are aiming for sustainability, they have had other significant economic implications like changes in supply and demand and consumers’ behavior and market changes.

This project investigates the economic and social impacts that arose as a result of the introduction of the regulation on plastic bags in California in the USA, Kenya and Ireland.

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Plastic Bag Bans in U.S. Have Reduced Plastic Bag Use by Billions, Report Says - EcoWatch

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A new report finds that bans on plastic bags around the U.S. have already reduced the number of bags used by billions.

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People's are willing to Adapt to the change.

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California may soon ban plastic grocery bags

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Environmental Goals:

The main purpose behind the ban of plastic bags is to minimize market failures related to the impact on pollution and to the related environmental damage.

Economic Consequences:

Some of the policies achieved certain results but also led to other effects such as unemployment of the workers in the plastic industry, forced the consumers to pay more, and created a need for substitutes (e.g., reusable bags or even garbage bags as substitutes).

Behavioral Adaptations:

Consumers start buying larger quantities of the substitute that is being sold when a certain product is banned.

In certain instances when such resistance is faced, illegal markets are formed for example in Kenya.

Case Study Insights:

In California there has been a reduction in pollution with the ban on bags but increased use of plastic “reusable” bags which are also an environmental hazard.

Kenya had black markets that undermined effects of the ban due to poor enforcement.

Revenue generated from the levy in Northern Ireland was sufficient to impact the usage of plastic bags as it made users seek for the more sustainable options without entirely prohibiting supply.

Policy Design Matters:

Policy makers should focus on the following to achieve effective interventions:

The nature of the economy of the region and the level of income consumers who were targeted.

The mechanisms should be in-place available to avoid negative affects.

The motivation systems for these practices to ensure minimal damage to the economy and that it is a sustained practice moving forward.