As seen in Townhall
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With the stroke of a pen, Californians will no longer be offered plastic bags at the grocery checkout lane. On Sunday, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation that bans all plastic shopping bags beginning in 2026.
Up until this point, California had done away with thin plastic bags, but still offered shoppers thicker ones that were said to be reusable. Not anymore, however. Now consumers will only be offered a paper bag if they fail to bring their own reusable totes.
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But that isn’t the only pricy imposition on New Jerseyans who prepare and consume food. Alternative shopping-bag sales skyrocketed in the state, as one might expect. “An in-depth cost analysis found a typical store can profit $200,000 per store location from alternative bag sales,” the Institute for Energy Research revealed. “For one major retailer, it amounted to an estimated $42 million in profit across all its bag sales in New Jersey.” It’s not that New Jersey residents were rigorous in their observation of the ban but that they are so often compelled to buy ever more shopping bags as a result of their own failure to keep a ready supply of totes with them at all times.
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Read the full article here, at Townhall
