Plastic pollution remains one of our most important and growing environmental threats. From the entanglement of fauna to omnipresent contamination of microplastics inside our own body, it is clear that our penchant for single -use plastic has serious consequences. But when it is everywhere, what can we really do about it?
New research indicates that there is at least one strategy that works to curb a particularly problematic and unnecessary form of plastic waste. According to a study published on June 19 in the journal Science.
Researchers have combined information on hundreds of policies instituted in the United States between 2017 and 2023, with citizen scientific data of more than 45,000 coastal cleanings carried out between 2016 and 2023. In areas with bag prohibitions and bag costs, single-use plastic bags were a significantly smaller proportion of trash collected compared to zones without bag. On average in all areas, the reduction associated with bag prohibitions was between 25 and 47%.
“The main observation is that these plastic bag policies are effective in limiting, but not to eliminate, the litter of plastic bags in the environment,” said Anna Papp, study co-author and environmental economist and post-doctoral researcher entering MIT, and economist Popular science.
Previous studies have concluded bag prohibitions and costs that change customer behavior, which leads to fewer single -use bags distributed in grocery stores. But there has been very little quantitative analysis of how this behavior change results in an environmental impact on a national scale, explains PAPP. Most bag policies only apply in certain contexts (for example, grocery stores and not take -out restaurants), so bags are always put into circulation, even in places with prohibitions. This new study is among the first research evaluated by peers to assess the largest plastic image.
“It was surprising to see that these policies worked,” said Kimberly Oremus, co-author of the study and environmental economist at the University of Delaware. Indeed, understanding the ecological effects downstream of a large type of policy is difficult. The prohibitions and specificities of the costs vary considerably between the premises, the cleaning of the coastlines are not uniformly carried out, and there is often a lot of uncertainty inherent in the available data which make the models of teasing difficult. Even if a trend is there, it is difficult to locate and prove. “There are a lot of things that can happen to a bag between the moment you get it in a store and it becomes dismissal along the shore. And with the scientific data of citizens, it can be very noisy, ”explains Oremus.
But, despite all the variables, she and PAPP have always seen clear trends. “We were pleasantly surprised to see that it is effective and so effective,” she says.
In addition to their main conclusion that these prohibitions work, researchers have also noted that complete prohibitions and bags are more effective than partial prohibitions, where certain heavier plastic bags are always authorized. State prohibitions have also been the most robust, showing a greater impact than municipal prohibitions. Finally, the areas that start with high levels of plastic litter benefit most from the prohibitions.
They returned to their conclusions by carrying out various control analyzes. The duo has tested the regional effects of overflows (that is to say evaluating whether a prohibition in a city has led to an increase in the litter of bags in neighboring communities, which could occur if people were led to shop outside the bags of bags). The team has not seen any overflow effects. In addition, they checked to see if there was a rebound in bag waste after a few years of prohibitions in place. There was not. Researchers have also sought to see if other forms of plastic waste reported in cleaning data have become less significant during the same study period. This type of statistics would have reported something other than targeted policy stimulated the change of waste. Against all these checks and more, their results have always remained important.
“These results were particularly useful for us to trust our results, that this is actually due to the policies of the plastic bags,” explains PAPP.
A promising conclusion was also that the areas with prohibitions of plastic bags also seemed to have fewer incidents tangled from fauna compared to areas without, as reported by citizen scientific data. There was not enough data on wildlife to show in a conclusive way that bag prohibitions were the cause of this improvement. It is a “suggestive” observation that PAPP and Oremus hope to follow.
But a great warning to all these plastic positive news is that the litter of plastic bags has in fact become more Previous on most sites over the seven -year study period, prohibition or no ban. When averaged on all the cleaning data of the coast, single -use bags were an increasingly large proportion of the litter collected from 2016 to 2023. In places with prohibitions and taxes in place, this increase was much, much slower and smaller compared to areas without bag restrictions. “Compared to no policy, its prohibitions for clear bags are better to reduce the litter of shoreline plastic bags,” notes Oremus. However, it is also clear that consumer -oriented policies alone can probably not stop plastic pollution.
“It is important to note that [this bag ban benefit] is a relative Decrease, “explains Papp.” Plastic bags and single -use plastics in general continue to be very practical, inexpensive and available in many different places. It may therefore not be surprising that the overall use of them continues to increase. Single -use bags still enter the environment and, once there, they continue to persist up to hundreds of years.
To completely stop the flow of plastic, from manufacturers to stores, including customers, including shores, governments are considering other approaches. In 2022, 175 countries signed a treaty to end plastic pollution. This group of nations has negotiated what the final agreement will look like in a series of meetings. The following should take place in August 2025 and the proposals include restrictions and prohibitions on the production of single -use plastics, cutting it at source. “I think this is more likely to be a complete solution than the side of policy consumption,” said PAPP.
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