Bag Ban Unintended Consequences: Wasilla Walmart Runs Out of Plastic Bags

Walmart in Wasilla ran out of plastic bags today. It was bad. Real bad.

Not the outlawed, regular plastic bags. The five times heavier, now legally encouraged, plastic bags.

Walmart adds a 10 cent charge for every bag, but customers still need them, and today they ran out.

How does Walmart run out? Well, 100 lbs. of bags now has 80% less capacity than the old bags. If you are Walmart, instead of one box of plastic bags, you now need to order five boxes of plastic bags, for the same amount of groceries.

Yes, our elected representatives did this to us.

And no, we don’t make plastic bags in Alaska. They have to be transported up from out of state. And bigger, heavier bags means more in manufacturing costs and higher shipping costs to get them up to Alaska.

And will anyone reuse the new plastic bags that wasn’t already going to reuse the old ones? Studies say no.

It just now costs more to get the same amount of groceries in a thicker one-use plastic bag.

If there’s a plastic bag lobby out there, kudos guys. You scored big time on this one.