RALEIGH – The most wrongheaded legislation you’ll ever see from Congress or your state legislature originates with a compelling anecdote, a half-baked statistic, and a heartfelt rendition of that immortal, mischievous phrase “There ought to a law!”
Careful policy analysis goes beyond a few examples and a simple correlation between two events. It involves looking more broadly and digging more deeply to discover the underlying pattern, to distinguish correlation from causation, and to consider the long-term consequences of short-term thinking.
Look at what’s happening right now in the North Carolina General Assembly on the issue of shopping bags. Yes, I know it may sound weird to consider shopping bags to be a legislative “issue,” but don’t blame me. I just work here.
Two companion bills, 1018 in the Senate and 810 in the House, would prohibit North Carolina retailers from sending their customers home with their wares in handy plastic bags. Instead, with very few exceptions such as wrapping meat, stores would have to supply only paper bags. Retailers violating the ban would risk as much as a $500 fine.
The stated goals are to rid the North Carolina countryside of discarded plastic bags and to help wean America off of petroleum products. But banning plastic bags is hardly a well-targeted remedy for either problem. The vast majority of North Carolina consumers don’t pitch their shopping bags out the window on the way home. They discard the bags properly or (as I do) reuse them for a variety of household chores. Few scholars who study such matters appear to believe that plastic bags pose a huge risk to wildlife, ecosystems, or human health. And as far as the market for petroleum is concerned, the share represented by plastic bags for North Carolina shoppers is minuscule. The bill couldn’t possibly make a significant dent in it.
So if banning plastic bags is too large a tool for combating littering and too small a tool for affecting worldwide oil markets, what consequences would it really have?
Well, for one thing it will jack up prices on consumer products in North Carolina. Paper bags cost more, and you can be sure that retailers won’t just subject the extra cost from their (diminishing) profit margins. Consumers will bear a significant share of the monetary burden for complying with the law.
Banning plastic bags will create other hardships for consumers, too. Paper bags aren’t as durable, so there’ll be more breaks and spills. It’s not as easy to carry multiple paper bags in each hand, making the shopping experience slower and more annoying. And paper bags are far more prone to facilitating pest infestations, such as roaches.
As for environmental impact, it is shortsighted simply to evaluate products on the basis of whether they can be recycled. Often, the potential is never realized anyway – plenty of paper bags will end up in landfills, decomposing slowly if ever. More importantly, harvesting reusable materials and then recycling them are both energy-intensive processes. A major reason why paper bags are more expensive than plastic one is that it takes about 40 times as much energy to make and transport the paper ones.
If your goal is to reduce littering, then crack down on littering. If your goal is to replace petroleum products with something cheaper and better, then go invent a new product and compete for the business in the marketplace.
But don’t pass burdensome, counterproductive regulations. Instead of assuming that “there ought to be a law,” try considering that there might be a solution respectful of personal freedom and property rights.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation