Science says plastic bag bans really do work (Joseph Winters, Jun 19, 2025, Grist)
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.