"Democratic state Sen. Catherine Blakespear said people are not reusing or recycling those bags"
Are you actually watching us? I see people reusing the bags at the grocery store all the time, because THEY GET CHARGED FOR THEM. I reuse the bags because they're GREAT for holding used cat litter and don't fucking break like regular trash bags, they also work for carrying lots of rocks that I mine in the desert.
"She points to a state study that found the amount of plastic shopping bags trashed per person grew from 8 pounds per year in 2004 to 11 pounds per year in 2021"
Right around the time those THICKER, HEAVIER BAGS were introduced. HOWEVER - these newer thicker bags are 8-10x the weight of the original thinner ones, so for her logic were to actually hold weight we'd need to go from 8 pounds per year per person to 64-80 pounds of plastic bag per person per year. As we see, that didn't happen, not by a long shot. So it would seem that people are not only buying fewer bags, but also reusing them for various other things before they ultimately get discarded.
Stupid vapid fucking politicians with no brains.