It’s not like Left Coast elites didn’t have any clue that it would.

When state legislators passed a 2014 law banning single-use plastic bags, the hope was that it would notably reduce the amount of discarded plastic. But fast-forward nearly a decade: Californians are tossing more pounds of plastic bags than before the legislation was passed.

That’s according to a recent report by the consumer advocacy group CALPIRG, which took population changes into account and found the tonnage of discarded bags rose from 4.08 per 1,000 people in 2014 to 5.89 per 1,000 people in 2022.

How could this happen?

After Golden State voters approved outlawing plastic bags, it has lead to any number of policy and even health problems. In 2017, a hepatitus-A outbreak occurred in San Diego that was attributed to the ban. During 2020, San Francisco’s health department prohibited facilities in the Golden Gate City from allowing customers to bring in reusable items (like bags, and reusable mugs) from home.

California has been obsessive about environmental policies, including plastic product use, for quite sometime. Now it is starting to catch up to them. Proof that plastic bag bans result in even worse outcomes for California have been around for quite some time. Not just in the state, but (most recently) New Jersey’s plastic bag ban has resulted in more pollution involving plastic bags than before outlawing them.

But the illnesses related to California’s banning plastic bags may just be the point. Doing so results in humans suffering and even dying getting environmentalists the results they obviously want: fewer humans on the planet, resulting from subjecting people to an existence of suffering and death due to illness.

PHOTO CREDIT: Pixabay