The prohibitions or taxes on the use of plastic bags for shopping work. A study on the US coast shows the impact of restrictions.
The initiatives to reduce or eliminate the use of plastic bags in commercial activities are fruiting. This is demonstrated by a study that sifted through the data on the cleaning of the beaches in thousands of locations in the United States.
Prohibitions and rates increased on plastic envelopes have produced An important drop in the bags found on the beacheseven if not all measures are equally effective. The research was published on Science.
A mine of scientific data hidden in the sand
A group of scientists from the Universities of Delaware and Columbia has compared the effectiveness of the initiatives against plastic envelopes in various jurisdictions in the United States. The researchers focused on their country because It is without a univocal policy, at the federal level, on plastic bagsand this allows you to compare the effects of the different measures decided locally (for example in individual states or cities).
Scientists analyzed the data relating to Over 45,000 cleaning operations of the US coasts and compared them with 611 initiatives to limit the use of plastic bags taken between 2017 and 2023. They thus calculated that plastic reduction policies had brought to a reduction in the total quantity of flood envelopes collected on the beaches from 25 to 47%compared to locations not covered by any limitation. The decrease in bags found in the sand had increased with the passage of time and without stagnation phases or steps back.
The authors of the study had the idea of using coastal cleaning data for analyzes when they discovered that some volunteers on the beaches of Delaware cataloged plastic waste collected in the Clean Swell app. The data ended up in the Trash Information and Data For Education and Solutions (Tides) database of Ocean Conservancy (a non-profit organization of environmental defense), which preserves the data on thousands of plastic cleaning operations collected in crowdsourcing in every part of the world. Hence the idea of evaluate the composition of the garbage collection To understand the effect of anti-plastic laws.
Better to tax than banning
Scientists have found that the state initiatives have a more important impact than the towns, and that the taxation of the envelopes to the consumer (as is the case for biodegradable bags in Italy) reduces the final total of plastic bags collected by the beaches even more than the prohibition of use, even if it remains to be understood the reason. Roads and rates increased on bags are more effective in places where pollution from plastic bags is more serious and persistent.
For the authors of the study, the measures against plastic bags could Reduce the problem of enlargement of marine animals of 30-37%compared to the areas where no ban does not apply.
A drop in the sea (plastic)
An important message is that the total percentage of plastic bags found on the beaches is however increasing, both in the areas covered by some form of contrast legislation and in the others. This is because plastic pollution is worsening, and the rules to limit it mitigate its scope, but they do not erase it. So in the areas affected by prohibitions and ad hoc tariffs it increases a little less than elsewhere.
