Last week, New York followed California by becoming the second state in the country to ban single-use plastic bags. The prohibition, which was included in the state budget, has been hailed by politicians and environmentalists alike as a major victory for our neighborhoods, parks and waterways that are increasingly besieged by plastic pollution.
But ironically, unless the New York City Council and other local governments take further action by also discouraging the use of paper bags, the state policy could end up doing more harm than good.
Why? Because, unlike California, New York did not couple its plastic bag ban with a fee on paper bags. Instead, the state chose to let cities and towns decide if they want to impose a 5-cent charge for paper bag use.
The omission is significant because recent experience demonstrates that while plastic bans can be very effective in cutting plastic waste, they can also result in an increase in paper bag use. For example, after Portland, Ore., banned plastic check-out bags in 2011, the city saw paper bag use increase by an astounding 491%.
This is problematic, because paper bags may be even worse for the environment than plastic ones. Paper production is highly resource-intensive and the process generates more air and wastewater pollution than plastic bag fabrication. What’s more, paper bags have a larger carbon footprint than their plastic counterparts, which could mean a setback for New York’s ambitious goals for climate change action.
The common sense solution, as Gov. Cuomo’s Plastic Bag Task Force itself noted, and the state Legislature implicitly recognized, is a two-part policy that not only bans plastic bags, but also discourages the use of paper bags by imposing a fee on them. The California law, for example, requires merchants to charge 10 cents per paper bag — a policy that seems to be working: Los Angeles, the state’s largest city, reported a 40% drop in the number of paper bags used by consumers after the fee was adopted.
In fact, until late March, it appeared that New York’s State Legislature was prepared to follow suit — with its main disagreement being over how large the paper bag fee should be, not whether it should exist at all. It is unclear why lawmakers changed course, but presumably business interests opposed to a mandatory fee prevailed in negotiations.
It could be that part of the difficulty in the paper-versus-plastic debate is a fear that pointing out the risks of paper bags distracts from the global plastic pollution crisis. Make no mistake; plastic pollution has already caused catastrophic ecological and economic damage. Report after report has detailed the tragic impact plastic waste is having on marine life and, just last week, an exhaustive study out of the U.K. estimates that the global cost of plastic pollution on marine fisheries, aquaculture and recreation alone could exceed $500 billion annually. Closer to home, one need only stroll through our city’s neighborhoods and parks to see the impact plastic pollution has on its aesthetic character and, by extension, real estate values.
New York State took and important step in addressing these problems with the plastic bag ban and, as recently as last week, several New York City Council Members signaled that they are prepared to introduce legislation that would place a 5-cent fee on paper bags — a small price to pay for the environment here and around the world. Let’s hope the Council follows through and that New Yorkers remember to bring their own bags.
Savarani is a legal fellow at the Guarini Center on Environmental, Energy and Land Use Law at NYU School of Law. Spiegel-Feld is executive director of the Guarini Center and an adjunct professor at NYU School of Law.