A new study found that plastic use in shopping bags rose in New Jersey following the imposition of a ... [+]
Governor Phil Murphy (D-N.J.) and New Jersey state legislators touted a new law banning plastic and paper shopping bags at stores when they enacted it in 2020. According to a new study, however, passage of New Jersey’s anti-plastics law has been followed by a near tripling of plastic consumption at Garden State checkouts.
“Plastic bags are one of the most problematic forms of garbage, leading to millions of discarded bags that stream annually into our landfills, rivers, and oceans,” Governor Phil Murphy (D-N.J.) said at the bag ban bill signing ceremony in November 2020. “With today’s historic bill signing, we are addressing the problem of plastic pollution head-on with solutions that will help mitigate climate change and strengthen our environment for future generations.”
Four years on, however, there is evidence that New Jersey’s bag prohibition not only failed to curb plastic usage, it backfired. According to a new study released on January 9 by the Freedonia Group, 53 million pounds worth of plastic shopping bags were used in New Jersey prior to implementation of the state’s bag ban, a figure that has risen to 151 million pounds since the prohibition was instituted.
The Freedonia Group study, which was commissioned* by the American Recyclable Plastic Bag Alliance, found that the reusable bags New Jersey shoppers have been forced to use since the bag ban took effect in May of 2022 are rarely reused, only two to three times on average. With many people in New Jersey now using reusable bags as single use bags, the state’s plastic and paper bag prohibition, though passed with the best of intentions, may be doing more harm than good in practice.
Reusable bags are manufactured with 15 to 20 times the amount of plastic used in the now prohibited single-use plastic bag, notes the Freedonia report. The reusable bags that New Jersey residents now pay for at checkout or when their groceries are delivered, according to researchers, need to be used anywhere from 11-59 times in order to have a net benefit for the environment. The Freedonia study found most reusable bags are used an average of two to three times. As a result, overall plastic usage for bags in New Jersey has risen.
A New York Times article from 2022, three months after New Jersey’s bag ban took effect, foreshadowed the findings of the new Freedonia report. The article reported on the “mountains of bags”of the reusable sort that were piling up in New Jersey homes and apartments. The Times reported how “for many people who rely on grocery delivery and curbside pickup services their orders now come in heavy-duty reusable shopping bags — lots and lots of them, week after week.”
Aside from failing to achieve its plastic mitigation objective, the new Freedonia study documents how New Jersey’s plastic and paper bag ban has created a new revenue stream for retailers, one funded by what is effectively a regressive tax on New Jersey households. In fact, the study found one retailer with 50 stores across New Jersey made an estimated $42 million off reusable bag fees alone. The new source of revenue is nice for retailers, but it’s coming from what is effectively a tax on New Jersey residents, disproportionately harming to those who can least afford it.
The Freedonia study found retailers are charging consumers 200% to 300% of the cost reusable bags, which is how businesses are profiting off the plastic and paper bag prohibition enacted in Trenton nearly four years ago. Freedonia’s Retailer Cost Analysis found New Jersey retailers are collecting an estimated $200,000—800,000 annually from each location from reusable bag fees. In fact, the report estimates reusable bag fees now comprise 1-2% of total revenue for New Jersey retailers.
New Jersey, based on this new research, is poised to end up as another cautionary tale demonstrating the unintended consequences of bag bans. If the goal of the bag prohibition was to reduce plastic use and fight climate change, as Governor Murphy and state legislators said, evidence indicates it has failed.
“[Six times] more woven and non-woven polypropylene plastic was consumed to produce the reusable bags sold to consumers as an alternative,” Freedonia Group reported. “Most of these alternative bags are made with non-woven polypropylene, which is not widely recycled in the United States and does not typically contain any post-consumer recycled materials. This shift in material also resulted in a notable environmental impact, with the increased consumption of polypropylene bags contributing to a 500% increase in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions compared to non-woven polypropylene bag production in 2015.”
Researchers find New Jersey's bag ban was followed by increased use of plastic, higher emissions.
Some proponents of New Jersey’s bag ban have acknowledged the prohibition’s unintended consequences. “There’s clearly a hiccup on this,” New Jersey Senator Bob Smith (D), told the New York Times, adding that he and his colleagues are “going to solve it.”
Hundreds of cities and towns across the U.S. have banned plastic bags. Statewide bag bans have been enacted in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington. Lawmakers in other states who have passed legislation preventing local governments from banning plastic bags, meanwhile, will likely view the Freedonia study as vindication.
*Updated, Jan. 25: An earlier version of this article neglected to mention that the Freedonia Group study was commissioned by the American Recyclable Plastic Bag Alliance, an association that represents American plastic bag manufacturers. The article has been updated to include that information.
