06/27/2025

New Study Says to Think Fees, Not Bans, to Reduce Plastic Bag Litter

Plastics News | Jim Johnson | June 20, 2025

New Study Says to Think Fees, Not Bans, to Reduce Plastic Bag Litter

A new study suggests plastic bag fees could be more impactful than bans in limiting plastic bag litter on shorelines.

And the work published in the journal Science also finds full bag bans are more effective than partial bans.

A just-published article examines the impact on bans, partial bans and fees as they relate to reducing plastic bag litter along the nation's waterways. Researchers used a database of cleanup projects created by the environmental group Ocean Conservancy.

"We're still getting more plastic bags on shorelines as a percentage of all the cleanup items over time," study co-author Kimberly Oremus said. "It's not eliminating the problem, it's just making it grow more slowly."

Policies affecting the use of plastic bags created a 25 to 47 percent decrease in plastic bag shoreline litter compared to locations without policies.

"Overall, our findings do show that plastic bag policies are broadly effective in limiting litter along shorelines," co-author Anna Papp said. "Ours is the first large-scale study to use hundreds of policies and tens of thousands of cleanups to look at their effects. But it is important to keep in mind that this is a relative decrease in affected areas compared to areas without policies."

The analysis suggests there is "evidence that fees may have a greater impact than bans, especially partial bans, although further research is needed to understand why," the article states.

Oremus is an associate professor at the University of Delaware, and Papp is an environmental economist who just graduated with a doctorate in sustainable development from Columbia University.

"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," according to the article.

"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," the article states.

The researchers used data collected through the Ocean Conservancy's Trash Information and Data for Education and Solutions database of crowdsourced records from cleanups around the world.

"A lot of the previous economics literature on plastic bag policies has used checkout data at the store level," Papp said in a statement. "So we were excited to add to that a direct measurement of plastic litter on these shorelines."

The study also shows that state-level action is more impactful than town-level policy in reducing plastic litter.