Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, has signed into law a ban on all plastic bags given out by grocery stores.

“Paper or plastic” will no longer be a choice at grocery store checkout lines in California under a new law signed on Sunday by the governor, Gavin Newsom, that bans all plastic shopping bags.

California had already banned thin plastic shopping bags at supermarkets and other stores, but shoppers could purchase bags made with a thicker plastic that purportedly made them reusable and recyclable.

The new measure, approved by state legislators last month, bans all plastic shopping bags starting in 2026. Consumers who don’t bring their own bags will now simply be asked if they want a paper bag.

State senator Catherine Blakespear, one of the bill’s supporters, said people were not reusing or recycling any plastic bags. She pointed to a state study that found that the amount of plastic shopping bags trashed a person grew from 8lb (3.6kg) a year in 2004 to 11lb a year in 2021.

Blakespear, a Democrat from Encinitas, said the previous bag ban passed a decade ago didn’t reduce the overall use of plastic.

“We are literally choking our planet with plastic waste,” she said in February.

The environmental non-profit Oceana applauded Newsom for signing the bill and “safeguarding California’s coastline, marine life, and communities from single-use plastic grocery bags”.

I would not be at all surprised if there is a right wing freakout over this, asserting that this is yet another violation of our fundamental freedoms, that the right to plastic bags is somewhere in the constitution, along with the right to bear arms, and that soon the entire nation will adopt it and become like the Socialist Republic of California.

This is not so far-fetched. Remember the furore of the elimination of incandescent light bulbs? Also the fuss over the move to require gas stoves to be more energy efficient, which was deliberately misrepresented as an effort to eliminate them entirely? Also those who decried the shift to energy efficient dishwashers and washing machines and low-flow toilets? People initially yelled loudly that these were not working as well and depriving them of the freedom of choice but eventually that died out as people got used to them and realized that they worked just fine, though creepy Donald Trump still complains about washing machines, dishwashers, and toilets.

It turns out that reusable cloth bags are not that energy efficient.

Producing one cotton canvas tote bag uses as much energy as 400 plastic bags.

As the British study discovered, a canvas bag has to be reused thousands of times before it is more environmentally friendly than a standard plastic bag. And to be as eco-friendly as their plastic counterparts, paper bags must be reused thrice. The results were even more discouraging regarding cotton totes: canvas totes require more than 130 reuses to equal the environmental effect of plastic bags.

The reason to not use single-use plastic bags is simply the need to reduce plastic waste, which is being increasingly recognized to be an environmental menace. Single-use plastic bottles, especially water bottles, are another major pollutant.

The plastic bag ban will not affect me. I already use reusable plastic bags for shopping, some of which I’ve had for decades. I am not sure why more people do not use them because it is so easy. I suspect that it is because people forget to take them to the store and thus have to get new bags. To avoid that, once I unpack items from the bags at home, I keep the bags by the door to remind me to put them in the trunk of my car when I next go out anywhere. That way the bags are always in the car if I should decide to do some shopping.