Will the plastic bag ban in N.J. help the environment? Here’s what experts say.


At this point, plastic bags are about as ubiquitous in our natural environment as the air we breathe — they’re all around us. Up to 5 trillion plastic bags are used worldwide each year, according to the United National Environmental Programme, and once these bags have fulfilled they’re single-use purpose, the majority become planet Earth’s problem indefinitely. Plastic bags can be found clogging our storm drains, washing up on shores, and clinging to highway fences. Not even the peaks of Mount Everest and or the remote Arctic Circle have been spared from the snare of plastic bag pollution.

That inescapable reality is partly what motivated legislators here to approve what is arguably the strictest plastic bag ban in the nation. The new law, signed by Gov. Phil Murphy back in September 2020, will ban businesses in the state from handing out single-use plastic bags, polystyrene food containers, and paper bags. After an 18-month lead time for stores and consumers to prepare, the ban will finally go into effect May 4.

But with the Environmental Protection Agency reporting 380 billion plastic bags and wraps used each year in the U.S alone, will banning single-use bags at grocery stores in the fourth-smallest state even make a difference? NJ Advance Media recently posed that question to environmental and public health experts and their responses may encourage you to embrace the new legislation and future measures like it.

A more comprehensive law

Daniela Shebitz, executive director and associate professor at Kean University’s School of Environmental and Sustainability Sciences, said she has faith “this type of ban will have a profound effect” in New Jersey, especially when looking at the progress made elsewhere in the country with less aggressive legislation.

“People will say, ‘Well people are still going to use plastic’ — and of course they are — but there’s evidence from places like California that these types of bans do have an effect,” Shebitz said.

California’s statewide single-use carryout bag ban has been in effect since November 2016 and led to measurable improvements in curbing plastic use since its implementation, according to a 2019 report from CalRecycle, the agency tasked with managing and enforcing California’s laws related to waste management. The report found that in the six months after the bag ban went into effect, in 86% of transactions, customers brought their own bag and didn’t purchase a paper or reusable bag. As a result, there was an 85% reduction in the number of plastic bags and a 61% reduction in the number of paper bags provided to customers.

New Jersey’s law goes even further than the Golden State’s ban. While 10 other states — California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington — have passed some form of a single-use plastic ban, New Jersey’s bill is called the “trifecta” because it bans not only single-use carryout plastic bags, but paper bags (at least at grocery stores) and many styrofoam food containers, too. The law also makes plastic straws at restaurants available only upon request.

“That’s really, really obviously going to have a tremendous effect on the environment in so many ways that we could see, but so many ways that we can’t even see anymore,” said Shebitz, a Ph.D in ecosystem science.

Of course, the proof will be in the plastic — or lack thereof. Measuring the effectiveness of the legislation will be up to members of the newly formed Plastics Advisory Council, according to the nonprofit Clean Communities Council and its Bag Up NJ campaign. Part of the state Department of Environmental Protection, this 16-member council will monitor the implementation of the plastic bag ban and evaluate its success.

Quick fix? Not so much.

Single-use plastic bags

The Garden State’s legislation doesn’t address other pollutants, like plastic bottles, for example. Pictured here, mounds of plastic bottles within plastic bags at Gaeta Recycling Co. Inc in Paterson. Patti Sapone | NJ Advance Media

While Marianne Sullivan agrees the plastic bag ban going into effect this May is “a good first step” toward protecting the environment from the harm of plastics pollution, the professor of public health at William Paterson University said there’s still a long way to go. For example, the Garden State’s legislation includes a number of exemptions and it doesn’t address other prolific pollutants, like plastic bottles and cutlery.

“It’s true that we already have a lot of plastic in our environment, so we’re going to be living with it for a long time,” said Sullivan, who specializes in environmental health.

Only a negligible fraction of the plastic waste generated globally is actually recycled and in fact, most of the plastic items we use never fully disappear — they just break down into smaller pieces, known as microplastics. The EPA reports that a plastic bag can take a thousand years to break down in the environment, for example.

Some of these microplastics “may be so small that we inhale them into our lungs through the air, we can ingest them in our food and in our water, and we can also eat them when we eat seafood,” Sullivan explained.

It’s been pretty well publicized that microplastics have entered aquatic food chains globally as well as here in New Jersey. A 2016 study by New York-New Jersey Bay Keeper found microplastics in estuary shellfish and finfish as well as some 166 million pieces of plastic floating in New Jersey and New York waterways. And although the full extent of the impact of this on human health is still unknown, Sullivan said microplastics are “an emerging human health concern.”

Nicole Davi, an environmental science professor and department chairperson at William Paterson University, shared similar concerns about plastic fragments in our environment, citing a 2019 study that found plastic pollution so widespread that the average person may be ingesting five grams of plastic a week, the equivalent of eating a credit card.

“Do you want to eat plastic? Because that’s what’s happening,” Davi said.

Davi said she cites that alarming statistic in particular not because she wants to scare the public, but because it emphasizes just how “necessary” the plastic bag ban legislation is for our survival.

“I understand it might be inconvenient to some people. But it’s a little thing we can do — out of the many things that we need to do — that can make a difference,” Davi said.

Davi’s optimism sticks out, especially in light of a sobering February report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which said climate change has already led to “some irreversible impacts as natural and human systems are pushed beyond their ability to adapt.”

The deciding factor? You.

Adapting to new conditions is what we do, said Pankaj Lal, a professor of earth and environmental studies at Montclair State University and founding director of its Clean Energy and Sustainability Analytics Center. And he says we can’t give up now.

“Yes, it’s getting too late with each passing day, but if we just say no, it will not make a difference. So if we don’t do anything, that is much worse than doing something,” Lal said.

So no, the plastic bag ban is not going to solve the issue of environmental pollution alone. But Lal said concerted efforts to address the problem, by governments and regular people, will go a long way toward improving things.

“I always argue that not taking an action is basically adding to the problem rather than being part of the solution. It’s not like we have to solve the full problem…but we have to believe that if we take incremental steps, we can make collective change,” Lal told NJ Advance Media.

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Jackie Roman may be reached at [email protected]. Still have questions about the bag ban? Ask them here.


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