Article in the National Review titled Feel-Good Bans on Straws and Plastic Bags Don't Help the Ocean. Photo of a child holding a plastic bottle surrounded by plastic bottles in a plastic bottle recycling center in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The subhead reads They increase plastic use, energy consumption, and health risks. Better idea: Improve trash collection in Third World countries. The article reads Politicians in Seattle and San Francisco are being cheered on by some voters for their recent bans on plastic straws, having already banned plastic bags years ago. California in 2016 became the first state to ban plastic bags, New York and New Jersey are mulling similar laws, and countries from Slovenia to New Zealand are planning on banning them in 2019. Supporters of laws prohibiting plastic products encourage politicians to make meaningless gestures rather than focus on ridding the oceans of plastic and other waste. A 2015 study in the journal Science found that of the estimated 4.8 to 12.7 million metric tons of plastic that entered the ocean from 192 of the world’s coastal countries, as little as 0.9 percent of it came from the United States. A more recent study, from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, found that 90 percent of plastic polluting the world’s oceans comes from ten rivers, eight of which are in Asia; two are in Africa. In other words, developed countries such as the United States and New Zealand aren’t part of the problem, and taking away the freedoms of their citizens isn’t part of the solution either. As with most government dictates, plastic bans can have unintended consequences such as increasing energy use and water pollution, heightening public-health risks, increasing overall use of plastics, or harming groups in society such as the disabled and poor. For example, a recent Danish Environmental Protection Agency study found that an organic cotton bag uses more than 150 times as much energy and causes over 600 times as much water pollution when compared with low-density polyethylene (LDPE) grocery-store bags. A University of Arizona study found that 97 percent of users of reusable grocery bags never wash or bleach them. The research found bacteria levels in bags “significant enough to cause a wide range of serious health problems and even lead to death.” Paper bags have their own drawbacks vs. LDPE ones. These are even more pronounced when one considers how much more frequently supermarkets double up paper bags in an effort to match how remarkably strong LDPE is for its weight. A Scottish report concluded that paper bags, compared with plastic bags, resulted in “higher environmental impact” when it comes to “consumption of water, emissions of greenhouse gases, and eutrophication of water bodies (rivers, lakes, etc.).” Referring to plastic grocery bags as “single use” is almost certainly a misnomer. An Australian government study estimated their re-use rate to be as high as 75 percent. Consumers in jurisdictions with bans who reused LDPE grocery bags to line their household trash cans, pack lunches, or even pick up their dog’s poop most often have little choice but to purchase significantly higher-density plastic bags for these purposes. Bans on plastic straws have also been documented to lead to increased use of plastics, most notably at Starbucks, where the new nitro lids actually use more plastic than the old lid-straw combo they’re meant to replace. To the extent that restrictions on plastics force consumers to switch to other products, the overall environmental impact can be significantly negative. Banning plastic bags and straws is akin to sticking your finger in the hole of a dike with a thousand holes; it’s not going to help our oceans. If you worked in a small business that was losing $1,000 a month and you told your boss you’d come up with a way to save a dollar next month, you’d soon be out of a job. Cheering on politicians who propose and implement token bans on plastic encourages them to avoid doing the hard work required to solve the real problem.