<
https://grist.org/science/plastic-bag-ban-beach-cleanups-ocean-conservancy-study/>
"When you outlaw or discourage the sale of plastic bags, fewer of them end up
as litter on beaches.
That’s the intuitive finding of a paper published Thursday in the journal
Science, which involved an analysis of policies to restrict plastic bag use
across the United States. The study authors found that, in places with plastic
bag bans or taxes, volunteers at shoreline cleanups collected 25 to 47 percent
fewer plastic bags as a total fraction of items collected, compared to places
with no plastic bag policies.
The study adds weight to less formal analyses of plastic bag bans conducted by
advocacy organizations and could inform negotiations later this summer over the
United Nations’ global plastics treaty. “These are large-scale, robust findings
that show that these policies are effective in at least limiting plastic bags
in the environment,” said Anna Papp, one of the study’s co-authors and an
incoming environmental economics postdoc at MIT.
As litter, plastic bags entangle wildlife and kill more sea turtles, whales,
dolphins, and porpoises than any other type of plastic. They also break down
into microplastics that have been linked to metabolic disorder, neurotoxicity,
and reproductive damage in humans; a study published on Wednesday found that
communities living near high concentrations of marine microplastics had an
increased risk of Type 2 diabetes, coronary artery disease, and stroke.
In response to these harms, cities and states across the country have passed
laws that ban plastic bags from certain retail locations, or impose a small fee
on them — usually 5 to 10 cents. At least a dozen states have banned plastic
bags, including Delaware, New Jersey, and Vermont. Jurisdictions with plastic
bag fees include Alexandria, Virginia; Duluth, Minnesota; and Howard County,
Maryland.
Papp and her co-author — Kimberly Oremus, a marine sciences professor at the
University of Delaware — said they got the idea for their study after learning
about beach, riverbank, and lakeshore cleanups organized by the nonprofit Ocean
Conservancy. These volunteer cleanups go all the way back to 1986, and reports
from each year document the number and type of plastic items collected across
jurisdictions. In more recent years, participants have logged their item counts
and types in a mobile phone app.
That standardized data could help fill an important research gap, Oremus said,
on the connection between plastic bag restrictions and shoreline pollution.
Prior scientific analyses had tended to focus on consumer behavior — for
example, by counting the number of shoppers who emerge from a supermarket with
plastic versus reusable bags. Some studies had focused on plastic bags clogging
storm drains, since this can create a flooding hazard. “What we were missing
was a direct measurement of the litter in the environment,” Oremus said."
Via
Reasons to be Cheerful:
<
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/what-were-reading-plastic-bag-bans-work/>
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
