California renews war on plastic bags despite science

California’s legislature passed two bills last week prohibiting retailers and grocery stores from offering customers reusable plastic bags. 

‘California’s original ban on plastic bags hasn’t worked out’

Stores have been offering reusable plastic bags ever since 2016, when California lawmakers passed a climate mandate banning single-use plastic bags. But the mandate backfired because stores began using reusable plastic bags with a thicker film, which increased plastic consumption.

Now California lawmakers are out to ban those, too. The state assembly and state senate last week voted to approve SB 1053 and AB 2236, which allow stores to only offer certain types of bags, Fox News reported. These include textile and cloth shopping bags, bags made of polypropylene, polyethylene-terephthalate (PET), Tyvek, or bags made of at least 50% recycled paper.

"California’s original ban on plastic bags hasn’t worked out as planned, and sadly, the state’s plastic bag waste has increased dramatically since it went into effect," said Sen. Catherine Blakespear (D-Encinitas), SB 1053’s author, in a statement. "California must do its part to eliminate this scourge that is contaminating our environment."

Plastic bags are much better for the environment, data show

But scientific evidence suggests that California’s repeated crackdowns on plastic have little to do with saving the environment. Data show that plastic bags are generally less harmful to the environment than the bags allowed by the legislation.

Figures presented by Our World in Data reveal the “number of times a given grocery bag type would have to be reused to have as low an environmental impact as a standard single-use plastic bag.” According to the data, an organic cotton shopping bag would have to be reused 20,000 times to match a plastic bag in environmental impact. A conventional cotton bag would have to be reused 7,100 times and a composite bag 870 times.  

The site lists seven more categories which require less uses, but none as harmless as a plastic bag, including recycled PET (84 reuses), polypropylene, non-woven, recycled (52 reuses), polypropylene, woven, recycled (45 reuses), bleached paper (43 reuses), unbleached paper (43 reuses), biopolymer (42 reuses), and polyester PET, recycled (35 reuses). 

The situation is similar when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions, based on an analysis of the “number of times a given grocery bag type would have to be reused to have as low a level of greenhouse gas emissions as a standard single-use plastic bag.” 

Danish study: Plastic shopping bags have ‘overall lowest environmental impacts’

These data are based on a 2018 study commissioned by the Danish Environmental Agency, which analyzed 14 types of bags in Denmark. The study compared 'all environmental indicators,' which was a combined value for climate change, greenhouse gas emissions, ozone depletion, human toxicity (cancer effects), human toxicity (non-cancer effects), photochemical ozone formation, ionizing radiation, particulate matter, terrestrial acidification, terrestrial eutrophication, marine eutrophication, ecosystem toxicity, resource depletion (fossil), resource depletion (abiotic), and water resource depletion. 

For most categories, the study found that low-density polyethylene (LDPE) bags, which are the usual plastic shopping bags in supermarkets, “are the carriers providing the overall lowest environmental impacts for most environmental indicators.” 

The California bills will be reconciled in the General Assembly and then sent to Governor Gavin Newsom’s desk for signature. If signed, the law will take effect January 1, 2026.