On the California Plastic Bag Ban

by Dr. Gerard Emershaw

In California, Governor Jerry Brown recently signed Senate Bill 270 into law. This new law bans single-use plastic bags at California grocery stores and the like. The law gives customers a choice: “Purchase a reusable bag, or pay at least 10 cents for a paper bag or a multiuse plastic carrier that meets a set of state durability standards.” This is not a new concept in California. Over 100 California municipalities had already enacted similar bans on single-use plastic bags based on the conclusion that “the amount of waste generated by plastic bags outweighs the convenience.” Immediately following the enactment of this new California law, an industry group called the American Progressive Bag Alliance vowed to collect enough signatures to place a referendum on the 2016 ballot to overturn this ban.

Is this latest California Nanny State law really necessary? Are single-use plastic bags overrunning California and threatening to despoil the natural beauty of the Golden State? Clemson Professor Daniel K. Benjamin has pointed out that garbage dumps do not take up a large amount of land in the United States: “Ted Turner’s Flying D ranch outside Bozeman, Montana, could handle all of America’s trash for the next century—with 50,000 acres left over for his bison.” The real problem, if there is one, is simply a matter of litter. If these single-use plastic bags are winding up on the ground, government simply needs to enforce laws against littering. With all of the actual social and economic problems facing California, banning single-use plastic bags appear to be a solution in search of a problem.

Who will benefit from this new law? Manufacturers of reusable bags and state-approved multiuse plastic carriers for one. State bureaucrats, who will now have more tax money to award to their cronies or use curtailing the liberties of Californians, for another.

Who will be hurt most? Manufacturers of single-use plastic bags will be harmed. However, more egregiously, poor consumers will be harmed. Forcing the less affluent to purchase reusable shopping bags or pay a tax of at least 10 cents for each paper bag is yet another regressive means of redistributing wealth from the poor to government and its corporatist puppet masters. This is all nothing but a collectivist plot by environmentalists and neo-progressives in California to force their misguided vision upon the state and harm the poor.

(For a much more detailed discussion of the Collectivist nature of Environmentalism and Neo-Progressivism, read my new book The Real Culture War: Individualism vs. Collectivism & How Bill O’Reilly Got It All Wrong. Available now on Amazon in both print and Kindle.)