Plastic bag bans and fees reduce harmful bag litter on shorelines

I think the parent is pointing out that empirically, increases in plastic waste are observed in places where plastic bags are banned.

You are correct there’s no problem with them if they’re used enough, but evidence suggests they do not receive that usage.

Not OP but San Diego has this issue. Especially in summer with tourists. My local beach gets disgusting around the fire pits / area closest to the parking lot. I was blown away by the trash yesterday morning when I walked through the main area to surf. People suck sometimes.

Beaches are tourist attractions, at least in my experience during beach season, tourists outnumber locals by an order of magnitude, and locals elect to go when they aren't so crowded.

I suspect it’s mostly tourists leaving the garbage. People usually don’t literally trash the places they frequent. Tourists don’t follow rules.

I’ve been to the beach more times than I can count, over a lifetime living in Florida . Loud music, yes, cars and especially big trucks, yes. But I’ve never seen people just pack up and leave their trash when they’re done. There are ample trash cans and they get used. Take this anecdote for what it’s worth.

> No idea how you can motivate people.

As market driven as the US is, I'm surprised they haven't adopted more EU ideas to keep things tidy. The euro to get a shopping cart tends to keep parking lots clean.

I went to an event in Germany once that had re-usable plastic beer mugs. 5 euro/beer with 1 euro back for the mug. They were also easily stackable, so if you saw a mug on the ground you would pick up. 5 mugs == free beer. Simple idea using money that kept the event relatively clean given the number of people partying.

I always find it oddly unnerving when people use the term "virtue-signaling" because it indicates to me that they genuinely do not understand how other people could want to do good without any direct benefit to themselves.

Which is?

> California - you pay 5 or 10 cents but there is no practical way to redeem it

I once brought my cans to a recycling center and got paid. This was in the Bay Area. For the cost of driving it is uneconomical unless you bring hundreds of cans. Someone with a bike and trailer could make it work.

That's my guess. Wherever I go outside of cities, I see plastic bottles, bags and other wrapping of sweets, candies, cigarettes, etc.

"reasonable alternatives"?

Look how well paper straws work... and they're still coated in thin film of plastic anyway. Total stupidity, except for those who are making $$$ from convincing us that they're somehow better.

Plastic bags fulfill a need for a very lightweight, flexible, waterproof container. The alternatives all require more energy overall, which eventually results in CO2 emissions, so if you believe in climate change, that's not good either.

The only argument I've heard against them is "they look bad littered everywhere", which is a purely subjective opinion and one that is better handled, should one want to tackle the problem, by other means than depriving the majority who doesn't litter.

Most uses of plastic do not have a reasonable alternative. Glass and metal have properties similar to plastic but require more energy to produce, more material and are heavier which increases freight costs.

Counter-anecdote, my county banned disposable plastic bags some years back, effectively ending the former plague of feral plastic bags flapping in the wind everywhere, but I basically never see people buying the cheap bags by the checkout counter.

People really did adapt by bringing their own bags.

(I live in suburb hell -- unfortunately, I'm probably the only person who walks to the grocery store, so car use is unaffected)

I think one issue with these plastic bags is that they're very light and not attached to anything. So, even if they end up in a landfill, they can still get blown away and end up in a body of water.

A plastic bag that is used as a garbage bag, on the other hand, will remain where it is because its contents weigh it down.

I'm not sure how to solve this, though. Perhaps standardizing the size of these bags to make them easily usable as garbage bags, and then marking them to indicate reuse, would be helpful.

Where I live single use plastic bags have been banned for several years now. People either take reusable fabric or jute bags when shopping or have to buy paper ones, which are good enough for a few uses by themselves.

I always keep a bag on me that folds up quite small. It’s a change but easy to adapt to.

>Does a type of alternative make it hard to carry them by foot or by bike?

Just last night we were having family pizza night and realized we didn't have mushrooms. Grabbed a reusable bag -- one that I have used dozens to hundreds of times -- and stuffed it in my pocket and hopped on my bike to the grocery store.

It is an utter non-issue. Indeed, in that case I would never have trusted a classic thin plastic bag but the heavy duty reusable one gives me no concern when it's swinging on my handle as I biked home.

When we first got rid of plastic bags here in Ontario, Canada, early on I'd often find myself at a store with no bags, so I went through the period of accumulation. Not to mention that a lot of stores went through a malicious compliance where the bags they sold were terrible and barely lasted more than one use.

Eventually habits changed and now we as a family pretty much never get new bags, and the options stores sell are significantly better, and are truly reusable.

And like someone else said, plastic bags (and plastic straws for that matter) were an absolute scourge, litter wise. Antisocial litterers, blowing out of garbage, etc. Now I never see them. From an environmental perspective -- meaning I like walking my neighbourhood without seeing trash blowing around -- it is a massive improvement.

We tried that for more than thirty years.

We tried public awareness campaigns, major environmental and educational groups were part of it, celebrities and television personalities held galas on prime time which some estimated 40% of the population tuned into, frequent ad campaigns, via sports clubs and scouting, lobbying, partnering with ski resorts.

It barely worked. Plastic pollution still increased.