Articles / White Pollution: What Cities Can Do About Plastic Bags

Credit: Pantagrapher/Fickr

Five days a week, two skimmer boats known as TrashCats move along the Anacostia River, their front pincer-like gates opening wide to swallow small islands of floating garbage. The TrashCats collect approximately 400 tons of debris from the river each year, of which plastic bags, along with Styrofoam, food wrappers, bottles and cans, make up a significant portion.

In the fight to reduce the use of disposable bags, 2010 has been a year of contrasts. Just last week, a statewide measure to ban plastic grocery bags failed to pass in the California legislature following intense lobbying from the American Chemical Council. Yet earlier this year, Washington, D.C.’s Anacostia River Cleanup and Protection Act of 2009, instituting a 5-cent fee on all single-use paper and plastic bags, went into effect. The first successful bag tax in the nation, the bill has produced astonishing results: monthly use of disposable bags has dropped from an estimated 22.5 million bags distributed monthly in 2009 to just 3.2 million since the law's implementation in January 2010. Between January and May, the tax generated almost $1 million for clean up efforts on the Anacostia River.

Campaigns Against Single-Use Bags

The failed California bag ban aside, a growing list of cities and countries around the world are campaigning to reduce the use of disposable bags, prompted by concerns over the environmental impacts to wildlife and water systems. “Legislatively, the whole disposable bag thing has really caught a lot of people’s attention,” says Darby Hoover, Senior Resource Specialist in NRDC’s San Francisco office. “It’s become a huge hot topic.”

While Washington D.C. is the only American city to have implemented a tax on single-use bags, several cities have successfully legislated bans in the past few years. In 2008, ban ordinances passed in Malibu, Los Angeles and Fairfax, California, Westport, Connecticut, and Maui County, Hawaii, despite, in some instances, opposition from industry groups.

California legislature deliberated a bill this summer to ban single-use bags throughout the entire state with the option to sell recycled paper bags at cost. Since the bill would apply to all of California, “the grocers are actually behind this because they would prefer consistency,” says Hoover. “Right now, San Francisco’s got one type of legislation, Santa Barbara’s got another…and so they [grocers] would actually prefer a statewide initiative that would repeal the local initiatives.” To the disappointment of environmental groups like NRDC who pushed for the ban, the measure failed in legislative session early this September.

Many cities and countries outside the U.S. are embracing taxes or bans on single-use bags. In 2002, Ireland became the first country to levy a tax on bags, charging a fee of 15 Euro cents per plastic bag supplied at retail locations. And in 2007, Ireland raised the tax to 22 Euro cents. The Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government has noted that the fee has been an “outstanding success” with a reduction in plastic bag use “estimated at over 90 percent.” Habituated to bringing their own bags, many Irish now consider the use of plastic bags socially unacceptable.

Taking the lead from Corsica’s 1999 ban of plastic bags, Paris initiated a ban on non-compostable bags distributed at supermarkets to go into effect countrywide by the end this year 2010. The policy originated from a former minister of ecology and, in sharp contrast to many examples in the U.S., was supported by large retail markets.

And in China, thin plastic bags less than 0.025 millimeters thick, collectively called “white pollution” when found as litter, were banned in 2008; retailers caught handing out such bags are slapped with fines as high as US$1,500.  China’s National Development and Reform Commission stated in June of 2009 that plastic bag use in supermarkets dropped by 66 percent since the policy went into effect, saving 1.6 million tons of petroleum.

The Opposition Gains Ground

In the United States, however, opposition to many proposed bans or taxes on bags have won out. In Seattle, residents killed the city council’s decision to introduce a 20-cent fee per disposable plastic or paper bag in a voter referendum. The vote came on the heels of a $1.4 million campaign sponsored by the plastics bag industry to petition against the fee. Fairbanks, Alaska likewise reversed a decision to institute a 5-cent plastic bag tax after residents voiced objections. And in two California cities—Oakland  and Manhattan Beach—the plastics industry successfully lobbied against plastic bag bans, claiming that such a ban would lead to increased use of paper bags, which, industry argued, may actually cause more environmental harm than plastic bags.

Washington, D.C. simply avoided the controversy over paper versus plastic and focused on all disposable bags. As Hoover points out, Washington, D.C. “had correctly observed that there are environmental problems with both paper and plastic bags.” Both paper and plastic “have environmental consequences,” says Hoover: As trees are cut down for virgin paper, biologically diverse forests are replaced with monocultural tree plantations. Additionally, “tremendous amounts of water and energy go into making virgin paper,” says Hoover. Hoover stressed, however, that such impacts can be reduced significantly by recycling paper bags—easily done in most communities—and by only using paper bags with a high percentage of post-consumer recycled content.

In addition to sidestepping the paper versus plastic debate, the legislators of the D.C. tax dealt with other arguments they anticipated would be leveled against the bill. “The drafters of the legislation were really, really smart”,says Jon Devine, Senior Attorney in NRDC’s Washington, D.C. office.“It [the legislation] was a well structured, well thought out program.” In response to the potential argument that a bag fee may hurt low-income shoppers, for example, the bill stipulates that a portion of the revenue generated be used to provide reusable bags to seniors and low-income citizens.To preempt opposition from businesses, the legislation allows retailers that provide refunds for reusable bags to keep 2 cents (rather than 1) of the 5-cent fee. And, in an attempt to squash potential objections that the fee is simply another unnecessary tax, the legislation allocates much of the revenue to a cleanup fund for the Anacostia River.

Ultimately, Devine points out, “it’s hard to argue with the facts that we had on our side.” The Anacostia, he says, “is literally impaired by trash” and is one of a select few water bodies around the country that officially does not meet water quality standards for garbage pollution. Surveys conducted on the river revealed that disposable plastic bags comprise more than 20 percent of trash found in the Anacostia River and more than 45 percent of trash found in tributary streams. “So there wasn’t a lot that people could say to refute the basic premise that this [plastic bags] wasn’t an unimportant source of the problem,” says Devine.

Despite the success of D.C.’s bag tax, other cities facing different circumstances may not necessarily be able to use it as a model. “D.C. is a great example but I would be cautious about saying it’s the best way or that we recommend that all cities or states follow the D.C. model,” says Hoover, adding, “Each city and state has varying circumstances based on things like the types of waste management procedures in place, whether they have things like curbside composting for consumers, a robust recycling system, recycled content procurement laws.”

Influencing choice

A question remains: Why has the small fee of five cents per bag worked so well to curb bag use in Washington D.C.? “I think it shifted people’s consciousness,” says Hoover. “You’ve got people standing in a check-out line, and they’re asked, ‘plastic or paper?’ The vendors used to just pop up a bag and stick another two or three bags inside and throw your two items in it.” “It makes people more aware of choices they have around bag use,” says Hoover. “It’s not that it’s a big hit to their wallet for most people, as much as it reminds them that they have choices beyond paper or plastic.”

Devine concurs: “I think it may have something to do with choice at the point of sale. Meaning you have the choice to get the bag or not.’”

Kate Gerard, a resident in a suburb of D.C., phrases it slightly differently. “I always wanted to remember to bring my bags but now I do because I don’t want to pay more,” she says. “You really do have to plan more in advance, but it’s made me so much better. I just needed that little nudge.”

Other customers would seem to agree with Gerard. Ernest Vincent, manager of Giant Supermarket on Eighth Street in Washington D.C., said  “You’re going to get complaints any time people have to change their behaviors, but there are three times as many customers who are happy [with the fee].” Vincent went on to say that when customers are asked by cashiers if they need a bag, “a lot of people decline.” At times when they’ve forgotten to bring a reusable bag, customers often “take their items out and put them in their car loose,” he says.

The attempt to influence consumer choice (as opposed to mandating change through bans) lies at the heart of bag taxes. The idea of using such “nudges” to change individual behavior has gained a lot of traction in recent years: even the Obama Administration has consulted “science of change” theorists. A nudge, according to Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, authors of the bestselling book Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness is “anything that influences our choices.” Nudges, they argue, can be structured to influence people to make better decisions.

The Center for Research on Environmental Decisions (CRED) at Columbia University also promotes the idea of framing choices to encourage more environmentally friendly decision-making. Default options, for example, can be used to influence behavior. As the CRED authors write in the guide The Psychology of Climate Change Communication, people tend to “stick with the option that is selected automatically.” In the case of the D.C. bag tax, the default switched from “plastic or paper” to no bag unless you pay 5 cents. The CRED authors also point out that “people have a natural tendency to avoid losses rather than to seek gains,” which might explain the dramatic impact of the Washington, D.C. bag tax. Giant supermarkets, for example, have long provided refunds to shoppers who bring in their own bags; yet it was a tax that catalyzed a significant drop in bag usage at the chain’s D.C. area supermarkets.

Taxes are not the only nudges available to discourage use of throwaway bags. The town of Ciotat in Provence, France, for example, provides a faster lane expressly for those shoppers with reusable bags. The French the retailer Monoprix allows shoppers to borrow carts to take their groceries home at select stores. And here in the U.S., some Trader Joe grocery stores hold weekly raffles for shoppers who bring their own bags. Another type of nudge entails making the alternative to single-use bags more attractive or simply more “cool”: many reusable bags currently on the market, for everything from groceries to sandwiches, use bright colors, engaging patterns and stylish design to enhance their appeal. Finally, the simple act of asking customers in a checkout line if they need a bag rather than automatically giving one to them may be enough to prompt behavioral change.

Whether through the use of bans, taxes and other creative nudges, the push to reduce single-use bags around the world seems to be gaining momentum. “I really do think it represents people becoming more conscientious about their buying habits and how those have environmental impacts,”says Hoover. It’s an area “where cities and states can influence individual behavior and where individuals themselves are required to adopt different habits in order for it to work.”

Take Action

If you are considering ways to lower disposable bag use in your city, consider the following suggestions:

• Research various tools for influencing policy.
• Organize with businesses to get them on board with a bag ban or tax; encourage businesses to provide reusable bags at checkout lanes and to rethink bag use.
• When bans or taxes are politically infeasible, consider other creative “nudges” that could be implemented to discourage disposable bag use in your community.
• Attend city council meetings and urge your council members to find a way to curb bag use.  Malibu's City Council initiated its bag ban at the behest of a private citizen.
• Visit these websites to learn more about organizations and governments working to reduce disposable bag usage:
• Reuseit.com’s list of trends from around the world
• The Anacostia River Clean Up and Protection Act of 2009
• Tips for remembering your reusable bag
• Ireland’s “Plastax” law