The New Hampshire legislature doesn’t have a plastic bag ban this year (there’s one for plastic utensils that needs to die), but banning misnamed single-use plastic bags is still on the Left’s bucket list even though doing so is worse for the environment they claim to be protecting.
I won’t relitigate past proof; you can read through it for yourself. A summary, however, is in order in the form of recent reporting on the complete failure of New Jersey’s recent “bag ban.”
Most of New Jersey’s stores switched to reusable shopping bags, the kind often sold in supermarkets. These bags are made with non-woven polypropylene, which uses more than 15 times more plastic, and they are often not recycled.
As a result, these bags caused greenhouse gas emissions to rise 500% compared to the old bags in 2015, according to the report.
On top of this, people tend not to reuse the new reusable bags as much as intended — on average they are only used about two or three times before being thrown away.
There are no reusable bags, plastic, hemp, or poly, that are less carbon-intensive or better for the waste stream than thin film, and this is old news. From manufacture to care to disposal, they have a bigger footprint that gets bigger unless you stop washing them after about 800 uses.
Yes, the anti-baggers will cite their own studies, but if the goal is to reduce waste and emissions, much like wind and solar, their solution makes matters worse, which is amusing if you read the opening of that plastic utensil ban I noted above. Proposed, “In furtherance of the state’s goals to reduce waste, promote equity and environmental justice, and address the impacts of climate change.”
And please do not misunderstand. I have no quarrel if you like or want reusable bags as a personal choice. The gripe is with applying government force based on, at best, a half-truth and something worse than a lie. Thin film bags are cheaper and easier to recycle and dispose of, while every alleged ban excludes so many types of plastic bags as to be little more than a virtue signal attacking one visible feature whose prohibition results in the use of more plastic to replace it.
You can ignore all that if you want, just don’t use the government to force the rest of us to go along on that ride.