California's plastic bag ban is failing. Here's why

[usonian]

https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2023-08-24/whats-the-deal-with-single-use-plastic-bag-bans
L.A. Times (I did not run into a paywall) Archived if you do: https://archive.is/IHgtT
BY JESSICA ROYASSISTANT EDITOR, UTILITY JOURNALISM
AUG. 24, 2023 3 AM PT. (get some sleep, Jessica!)
Long. Here is some of the article.

Most likely, you use a single-use plastic bag for as long as it takes to get your groceries home. A few minutes. Maybe a few days, if it gets to be a garbage bag. It will spend the rest of its life in a landfill — assuming the landfill can contain it — fragmenting into smaller and smaller pieces of plastic over hundreds of years. Though plastic bags represent a fraction of plastics produced, they are a unique source of blight, according to Mark Murray, the executive director of environmental group Californians Against Waste. They blow into tree branches, clog sewer drains, wrinkle jellyfish-like in our oceans and tumble across our roads. Because they’re so light, they defy proper waste management, floating off trash cans and sanitation trucks like they’re being raptured by a garbage god.

The law took a big hit in 2020. The plastics industry seized the moment when COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns went into effect. Reusable bags of any kind brought from home were “virus-laden”; they were “petri dishes for bacteria and carriers of harmful pathogens,” industry groups were quoted as saying by the New York Times. Bringing them into stores “puts consumers and workers at risk,” the Plastics Industry Assn. wrote in a letter to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (translation: another lie)

California Gov. Gavin Newsom suspended the state’s ban on grocery stores providing single-use plastic bags for 60 days amid COVID-19 concerns: The Times reported there were concerns “that clerks may be at risk for exposure to the coronavirus if shoppers are required to supply their own reusable bags to carry their purchases home.” It is now known that COVID spreads primarily via air. COVID transmission was never linked to reusable bags.

Eventually, the bag charges came back. But reusable bags — the ones you did bring from home — didn’t. Today, most shoppers who get bags for their groceries get all-new HDPE bags every time. (Oh, and have you noticed that most of these “don’t forget your reusable bags” signs have disappeared from grocery stores?)

skip to the end: The author recommends:

Realistically, the most efficient way to dispose of them is to use them as garbage can liners, pet poop bags, wet swimsuit holders, travel laundry hampers, and other household uses until they can’t be used any more. Then put them in your trash. Next time you go to the store, try not to forget to bring your reusables.