Plastic Bag Ban Success Hard to Gauge—For Billions of Reasons

“Americans use more than 380 billion single-use plastic bags a year.” Or do they? According to a professor of statistics and political science and member of the Data Science Institute at Columbia University, once a number is publicized, it can get replicated even if it’s not necessarily accurate. It turns out that this statistic isn’t accurate – but it has been used to justify countless bag bans. Get the full story on Bloomberg Environment.