[thimp]

Yeah that's about it. They slowly made them prohibitively more expensive. I've actually had the same shopping bag for 27 years and have gone from being seen as a hippy weirdo to never being questioned. It was just normalised that you got bags free before. That should have never been the case in the first place!

[lurking15]

> and have gone from being seen as a hippy weirdo to never being questioned

you're still a hippy weirdo

[xethos]

Sure, but nobody calls them on it any more. Sounds like the Overton window shifted to people using less plastic too.

[lurking15]

> Sounds like the Overton window shifted to people using less plastic too

wasn't the whole point of the article that people in fact use more now, also political self-segregation/echo chamber seems to be worse than ever so as much as people talk about overton window shifting it's mostly just partisans being blind to the people that don't share their opinions

[xethos]

Following through the HDPE link in TFA, it leads to a seperate latimes article. Pulling from that:

> In 2010, volunteers with the California Coastal Cleanup removed 65,736 plastic bags of all kinds from the shoreline, water, watercraft and coastal recreational areas.

> Coastal Cleanup Day 2016 was held before the statewide ban was in effect, but between the 2010 and 2016 cleanups, dozens of cities and counties across California had enacted single-use plastic bag bans of their own, including Los Angeles. The effect was noticeable: In 2016, only 24,602 plastic bags were picked up.

I'll grant you that it flattened out after 2016 a good bit, but getting nearly 63% of the way there is at least approaching the 80/20 rule - indicating the statewide ban had a measurable impact and got people most amenable to the change to make the small sacrifice to bring their own bags

[lurking15]

from the article

> According to a report by the consumer advocacy group CALPIRG, 157,385 tons of plastic bag waste was discarded in California the year the law was passed. By 2022, however, the tonnage of discarded plastic bags had skyrocketed to 231,072 — a 47% jump. Even accounting for an increase in population, the number rose from 4.08 tons per 1,000 people in 2014 to 5.89 tons per 1,000 people in 2022.

from you

> indicating the statewide ban had a measurable impact

So what I'm reading is that there's more plastic waste polluted after the law and lawmakers are claiming it's simply a matter of ineffective law. Sounds like a redux of No true Scotsman.

Why don't we instead blame legislators for their complete ineptitude that's been proven over and over? It's a matter of whack-a-mole, doomed to fail: make life easier for people instead of being a punitive, incompetent schoolmarm that only serves to inconvenience and infuriate people with much greater concerns in their lives. I can't tell you the number of times I've had to humiliatingly carry a small number of groceries in my arms to the car because I refuse to buy yet another reusable bag. Well jokes on you environmentalists, I'll have to drive to the grocery store again tomorrow and use more gasoline!

[thimp]

Glad to know that :)