You probably get most of the benefit by implementing the less severe variant of the policy - i.e. add a tax instead of banning it. I believe sales of plastic bags basically plummeted in Sweden after we introduced such a tax, and people who forget/otherwise don’t have their reusable bag with them can still get one in a pinch.
The bags people get in a pinch could be paper though, but they’re plastic. And here the newer plastic grocery bags have been beefed up for multi-use, so they’re much more sturdy (i.e. contain much more plastic). I’ve seen multiple comments that “nobody reuses them”. I don’t know about that, but since I have cloth bags and only get those in a pinch, I don’t need them for reuse so I use them as garbage bags just like I used to use the old flimsy ones that aren’t available anymore, and I’m sure a lot of people do the same - including people who don’t want to bother with the whole reuse thing or think it’s too woke or communist or whatever. The end result is even more plastic going into the landfill than before. I think it would be smarter to just switch to paper.
You probably get most of the benefit by implementing the less severe variant of the policy - i.e. add a tax instead of banning it. I believe sales of plastic bags basically plummeted in Sweden after we introduced such a tax, and people who forget/otherwise don’t have their reusable bag with them can still get one in a pinch.
The bags people get in a pinch could be paper though, but they’re plastic. And here the newer plastic grocery bags have been beefed up for multi-use, so they’re much more sturdy (i.e. contain much more plastic). I’ve seen multiple comments that “nobody reuses them”. I don’t know about that, but since I have cloth bags and only get those in a pinch, I don’t need them for reuse so I use them as garbage bags just like I used to use the old flimsy ones that aren’t available anymore, and I’m sure a lot of people do the same - including people who don’t want to bother with the whole reuse thing or think it’s too woke or communist or whatever. The end result is even more plastic going into the landfill than before. I think it would be smarter to just switch to paper.