In July 2019, New Zealand banned single-use plastic shopping bags up to 70 microns thick - a threshold specifically chosen to capture the thin, flimsy checkout bags that dominated retail at the time, rather than sturdier reusable plastic bags that some stores continued to sell. The government's own estimates put the impact plainly: more than one billion fewer plastic bags have ended up in landfills or the ocean since the ban took effect.

A single number, a huge behaviour shift

A billion bags is a figure large enough to be almost abstract, but it represents something very concrete: millions of individual shopping trips where New Zealanders, who previously would have taken a free plastic bag without a second thought, instead brought their own or did without one entirely. That kind of near-universal behaviour change, achieved through a straightforward ban rather than a gradually phased fee, is relatively rare among single-use plastics policies worldwide.

Designed as a first step, not a finish line

New Zealand never treated the 2019 bag ban as a complete solution on its own. It became the opening move in a much broader three-phase plan announced in 2021, targeting other hard-to-recycle single-use plastics for phase-out: produce bags, cutlery, plates, and bowls were removed from sale by mid-2023, with further categories originally scheduled to follow by mid-2025. The bag ban's early, measurable success - that billion-bag reduction - gave the government a concrete proof point to justify expanding the policy into these additional categories, rather than needing to argue from theory alone that New Zealanders would actually adjust.

Sources

New Zealand Will Ban Most Single-Use Plastics by 2025 - Global Citizen
New Zealand's ban on thin plastic bags comes into effect - Packaging Gateway