We don’t want plastic in the ocean. Most plastic degrades slowly and we have all seen pictures and videos of marine life being harmed by plastic. While many environmental issues are controversial, this one isn’t.
The simple goal of keeping plastic out of the ocean – which I share completely – is what drives some politicians to support banning plastic grocery bags.
It would appear that plastic bag bans are tailor-made for government intervention. The environmental costs of plastic pollution are not borne by consumers or producers. When these kinds of negative impacts exist – like with air pollution – it can make sense for government to set rules.
However, it only makes sense if the cure devised by politicians is not worse than the disease. The experience with plastic bag bans is that the alternatives do more damage than the plastic bags.
There are several reasons for this. First, the impact of plastic grocery bags from the United States is very small.
A study published in Science magazine in 2015 demonstrates that the vast majority of plastic in the ocean comes from developing countries. China and Indonesia alone account for more than one-third of worldwide ocean plastic. The small island country of Sri Lanka contributes about five times as much plastic to the world’s oceans as the entire United States. Completely eliminating the U.S. contribution to plastic of all kinds, not just plastic bags, would reduce the amount of ocean plastic pollution by less than one percent.
Despite that, it could be that we still have a big impact. In fact, we don’t really know how much impact plastic bags have on marine life. As the Ocean Conservancy itself admits, “the population-level consequences of marine debris from ingestion, entanglement and contamination remains relatively unknown.”
This doesn’t mean there are no impacts. Making public policy without critical information, however, is crap shoot and the risk of doing more harm than good is significant. That is exactly the problem with plastic bag bans.
The United Nations Environment Programme looked at numerous studies of alternatives and found that in many categories of environmental impact, the alternatives are worse. The UN report notes that “Reusable bags can be environmentally superior to [single-use plastic bags], if they are reused many times. For example, a cotton bag needs to be used 50-150 times to have less impact on the climate compared to” using plastic grocery bags. Cotton and paper bags are also the worst when it comes to creating “eutrophication” – runoff of nitrogen into water that can lead to oxygen depletion and dead zones at the mouth of rivers where it accumulates.
The report sums up the tradeoffs this way: “A shift to paper or cotton bags will help reduce impacts from both littering and microplastics. However, paper and cotton bags are likely to have more impacts on the climate, eutrophication and acidification, compared to the conventional plastic bags.”
Banning plastic grocery bags, when the impact from the U.S. is very small and the overall impact unknown, risks increasing the use of alternatives that end up doing even more environmental damage, including to ocean and marine life.
So, what is the solution?
The key is to prevent plastic from reaching the ocean and there are a growing number of ways to do that. Perhaps my favorite is a company called Plastic Bank.
Plastic Bank works in developing countries, where plastic pollution is most prevalent, and pays people to collect plastic waste and exchange it at a community location for goods and services. More amazing is what Plastic Bank does with the plastic it collects. In partnership with SC Johnson, the plastic is recycled to use in Windex bottles.
As the founder of Plastic Bank wrote recently, “For too long, we've been waiting for big businesses and governments to lead the change toward regenerating our planet. But what if we've had it wrong? What if we unleashed their power by democratizing environmental and social impact? Imagine a world where small businesses are empowered to end poverty, stop plastic pollution, and grow with purpose.” Exactly.
Actions by small businesses and individuals are more nimble and effective and we have only begun to harness the power of these types of approaches.
As I outline in my book Time to Think Small, Plastic Bank is just one of a growing number of companies and non-profit organizations that are taking environmental stewardship into their own hands and solving problems where politicians and government have failed.
The standard response is that while these efforts are nice, they don’t add up to much. With the multiplying effect of technology, that is simply wrong. This is the message I shared with students at Mountain States Policy Center's recent plastic bag ban debate at Boise State University. We all have a role in making thousands of small decisions to create a big impact.
While the United Nations has repeatedly failed to reach agreement on plastic pollution, Plastic Bank has prevented the equivalent of 8 billion plastic bottles from entering the ocean.
We can take action to reduce the amount of plastic that goes into the ocean and protect marine wildlife. Plastic bag bans, however, may end up doing more harm than good. Rather than relying on government-imposed regulations, it is time to take action that is effective and targeted. That’s the best way to help protect our oceans and marine life.
Todd Myers is the Vice-President for Research at the Washington Policy Center, a non-profit think tank that promotes public policy based on free-market solutions. He can be reached at tmyers@washingtonpolicy.org.