Plastic bag bans keep trash out of rivers and the sea –a study in Science 2025-06-19

Plastic bag bans work, finds a study published in Science this month. And not by a little bit: “a 25 to 47% decrease in plastic bags as a share of total items collected relative to areas without policies” and a “30 to 37% reduction in the presence of entangled animals in areas with plastic bag policies”. The study says even partial bans help, and the effect increases with more bans.

Plastic bag bans keep trash out of rivers and the sea –a study in Science, June 19, 2025

Cleanups alone do not solve the trash problem: trash just keeps coming back. Trash traps help keep it out of creeks and rivers, but have to be continually cleaned out. Banning use of the trash goes a long way towards fixing the problem, as this recent study shows.

Local governments in Georgia and even in Florida can ban or regulate such packaging.

Solid Waste Management Hierarchy –WWALS

More state and local single-use throw-away packaging bans keep getting passed, despite statewide pre-emption attempts, such as in Georgia and Florida.

In 2015, the Georgia legislature pre-emption bill SB 139 was voted down in the House by 67 to 85. That was such a failure that it has not been tried again.

In 2023, GA SB 49 proposed the opposite, repeating an attempt in 2020, “to prohibit the distribution of certain bags made of plastic film and items made of polystyrene foam by certain retail establishments; to provide for exceptions; to provide for a definition; to provide for related matters; to repeal conflicting laws; and for other purposes.” That bill did not pass, but let’s help it come back.

This lack of statewide Georgia legislation leaves local governments able to pass plastic bag bans, or other bans such as on styrofoam packaging.

Florida famously since 2008 has a statewide pre-emption on local bans of plastic bags or polystyrene. but the tide is turning even on that.

An attempt to expand that pre-emption back in 2019 failed, when in 2020 Gov. DeSantis vetoed HB 771. Even he thought local city plastic straw bans “have not, as far as I can tell, frustrated any state policy or harmed the state’s interests. In fact, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection has encouraged Florida residents, schools and businesses to reduce plastic straw use.”

Another pre-emption expansion attempt in 2024, for “Regulation of Auxiliary Containers” in SB 1126/HB 1641, died in committee.

In 2025, WWALS among many other organizations opposed an attempt to insert that “auxiliary containers” pre-emption language into CS/HB 1609 entitled “Waste Management”. Eventually the bill was withdrawn (we all won).

Meanwhile, Miami Beach, Coral Gables, St. Petersburg, and others have various single-use packaging bans or regulations. For example, St. Pete prevents businesses from offering plastic straws, and regulates styrofoam containers on city property.

Statewide single-use plastic bag bans have already passed in California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, New York, Oregon, and Vermont, and In 2019, according to the AJC, “the Atlanta City Council voted to ban single-use plastics in city buildings and at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.”

The Study

The Science study found “that plastic bag policies lead to a 25 to 47% decrease in plastic bags as a share of total items collected relative to areas without policies. This relative decrease grows in magnitude over time after policy implementation, with no evidence of rebound or spillover effects….
Bag policies yield similar effects along coasts and rivers, with suggestive evidence for larger effects along lakes. They have the greatest impact in places where plastic bag litter is most prevalent. Lastly, we find an imprecise 30 to 37% reduction in the presence of entangled animals in areas with plastic bag policies, although we cannot rule out a null effect.”

Anna Papp and Kimberly L. Oremus, Science, June 19, 2025, Vol 388, Issue 6753, Plastic bag bans and fees reduce harmful bag litter on shorelines,
https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adp9274

INTRODUCTION: Plastic pollution has become a global problem, constituting the majority of marine litter, threatening wildlife, and damaging ecosystems. Among the most common and troublesome categories of marine litter are thin plastic shopping bags, which often evade waste management by floating away in the wind and can entangle or block the digestion of marine animals. Plastic bag bans and fees have emerged as popular policy solutions to address this problem, with >100 countries passing such regulations. Although research has shown that these policies can reduce plastic consumption in some settings, their effectiveness in reducing plastic litter in the environment has not been systematically evaluated. This question is gaining urgency as some US states move to prohibit bag policies, even as 175 countries are in talks to create the first global plastics treaty.

RATIONALE: Whether a plastic bag policy succeeds in reducing shoreline litter depends on how it affects both consumption and waste management. For instance, a partial ban could fail to reduce plastic consumption but still reduce litter if customers substitute thin bags for thicker ones that are less likely to blow away. Or it could reduce consumption but not litter if the bags most likely to become litter are exempted from the ban. To directly measure the impacts of policies on plastic litter in the environment we leveraged the patchwork of hundreds of state and local plastic bag policies that were adopted across the United States between 2017 and 2023. We combined this with crowdsourced citizen–science data from >45,000 shoreline cleanups, in which participants counted and categorized the items they found. Our research design allowed us to control for the share of plastic bag litter in shoreline cleanups before and after each policy’s implementation as well as plastic bag litter trends from places that do not have a policy.

RESULTS: Although plastic bags’ share of cleanup items increased in general over the study period, it increased by markedly less in areas with bag policies. We find that plastic bag policies lead to a 25 to 47% decrease in plastic bags as a share of total items collected relative to areas without policies. This relative decrease grows in magnitude over time after policy implementation, with no evidence of rebound or spillover effects. Both full plastic bag bans and fees reduce plastic litter, whereas partial bans lead to the smallest and least precise effects, likely owing to exemptions for thicker plastic bags. Policies at all geographic scales are effective, with state–level policies being the most robust. Bag policies yield similar effects along coasts and rivers, with suggestive evidence for larger effects along lakes. They have the greatest impact in places where plastic bag litter is most prevalent. Lastly, we find an imprecise 30 to 37% reduction in the presence of entangled animals in areas with plastic bag policies, although we cannot rule out a null effect.

CONCLUSION: Our findings demonstrate that plastic bag policies have been widely effective in limiting—but not eliminating—shoreline plastic bag debris in areas where it was previously prevalent. If the sample used in our analysis is representative, then expanding plastic bag bans or fees would continue to decrease plastic bag litter and potentially wildlife entanglement compared with business as usual. With waste generation projected to increase, plastic debris entering waters will remain an important global problem in the absence of large-scale policy shifts.

Follow the link for the rest of the study:
https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adp9274

Thanks to WWALS Science Committee Chair Dr. Tom Potter for finding the study.

For more context, see The Real Trash Problem is the Producers, and How to Stop It 2023-12-23.
https://wwals.net/?p=63786

-jsq, John S. Quarterman, Suwannee RIVERKEEPER®

You can help with clean, swimmable, fishable, drinkable, water in the 10,000-square-mile Suwannee River Basin in Florida and Georgia by becoming a WWALS member today!
https://wwals.net/donations/

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