Doubling down on crazy? Washington state's costly idea for grocery bags

If you thought Washington’s plastic bag policy couldn’t get any more irrational, Olympia is here to prove you wrong.

Just two weeks ago, the state increased the mandatory bag fee from 8 cents to 12 cents. That’s already a slap in the face to families who are being told to pay more for a product the government forced onto them—thicker plastic bags that are worse for the environment and cost more than the thin bags people used for decades.

Now some lawmakers want to take the next leap into policy madness with Senate Bill 5965: ban plastic checkout bags entirely and jack up the paper bag charge to 20 cents.

That’s not environmental stewardship. That’s a taxpayer-funded experiment in how quickly government can turn a bad idea into an even worse one.

And what makes it even more irrational is that Washington already has the evidence in hand.

A Washington State University evaluation of the state’s bag law found the policy has not delivered the environmental results lawmakers promised. By one estimate, plastic use actually increased by weight because the so-called “reusable” plastic film bags are dramatically thicker than the thin bags the state banned. In plain English: Washington replaced lightweight bags with heavy bags—and then acted surprised when total plastic consumption went up.

The thicker bags only outperform thin ones environmentally if people reuse them repeatedly—often seven to 12 times just to break even. But anybody who shops in Washington knows that isn’t what happens. Most people use those thick plastic bags once—maybe twice—and toss them. Which means we’re not reducing waste. We’re manufacturing more plastic per shopping trip and calling it progress.

WSU also flagged the obvious supply-chain problem: thick bags are harder to transport efficiently. You can fit far fewer of them on pallets and in trucks than thin bags, meaning more freight and more emissions baked into the system from the start.

That’s the “green” policy Washington chose.

And SB 5965 responds to this failure by escalating the same mindset—ban more, mandate more, charge more.

Instead of fixing the perverse incentives that produced heavier plastic use, lawmakers want to ban plastic carryout bags entirely and shove people into paper bags—at 20 cents a pop. It’s hard to overstate how disconnected this is from environmental reality. Paper bags aren’t free from environmental cost. They’re bulkier, heavier, and resource-intensive to make and transport. And because people still need bags for bathroom trash cans, pet waste, and household cleanup, eliminating grocery bags doesn’t eliminate plastic. It simply changes where people buy it.

That’s not theoretical. National research has repeatedly shown that plastic bag restrictions cause purchases of other plastic bags to surge. One major study found that after bag policies were adopted, sales of small trash bags increased sharply—by 55% to 75% for 4-gallon bags and 87% to 110% for 8-gallon bags. You can ban the grocery bag at checkout, but you can’t ban human behavior: people still need bags, and they will replace them—often with thicker plastic products.

So what’s the result of SB 5965?

Higher costs for consumers. More bureaucracy. More political theater. And a high risk of doing even more environmental damage—again.

What’s most telling is how wildly out of step this is with what Washington voters actually want lawmakers focused on right now. Mountain States Policy Center’s inaugural Washington Poll, conducted January 2–9 among 800 registered voters, found a majority of Washingtonians want the bag ban removed. That should matter, because the public isn’t just annoyed. They’re correctly sensing what the state’s own research confirmed: this isn’t working.

The good news is there’s another option on the table—one that actually looks like evidence-based policymaking. Sen. John Braun has proposed a competing bill to roll back the excesses: allow thinner bags again (with recycled-content standards) and keep the fee modest rather than turning checkout lines into an environmental punishment zone.

That’s what sane reform looks like: use pricing to discourage waste, don’t mandate heavier materials, and don’t pretend that “ban it harder” becomes effective on the second try.

Washington tried the performative version of environmental policy. The results were predictable. Now lawmakers want to double down—turning 12 cents into 20 cents and turning a flawed ban into a total one.

Real environmental policy has to deal with real behavior and real tradeoffs. That means following the evidence—including the evidence coming out of Washington State University.

Because if your environmental program increases plastic by weight, increases emissions, and increases costs to families, it isn’t saving the environment.