How effective are plastic bag bans?

 Time -   Since 2010, more than 100 countries have implemented partial or total bans or fees on plastic shopping bags at either the national or subnational level. In the U.S., 611 state or local policies were enacted from 2008 to 2023—the overwhelming majority, 91%, imposed at the city or township level. 

How effective are the measures, especially in the places the bags do the greatest harm—along the coasts? A new paper in Science asked that question, and the happy answer the researchers came up with? Very effective—in some cases slashing the number of plastic bags scattered on shorelines by close to 50%. With such environmental measures as recycling and biofuels often not living up to their hype, regulating plastic bags appears to count as a bright green win...

The new study, which was led by environmental economist Anna Papp, an incoming postdoctoral scholar at MIT, reviewed the makeup of debris collected during 45,067 shoreline cleanups from January 2016 to December 2017, comparing the results of those locales that lay within jurisdictions that had implemented plastic bag restrictions to those that hadn’t. In the areas that did have bans or restrictions in place, there were  between 25% to 47% fewer bags than in unregulated areas. What’s more, there were 30% to 37% fewer reports of entangled animals in those areas.