The banning of plastic and paper bags and “law of unintended consequences”

the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Ridgewood NJ, over the years the Ridgewood blog has continually reminded readers of the “law of unintended consequences” . Sometimes it seems the solution to a problem is worse than the problem itself. The last 20 plus years in Ridgewood have proven that intentions often go awry.  It’s the Law of Unintended Consequences and it’s more common than you think.

The law of unintended consequences is a frequently-observed phenomenon in which any action has results that are not part of the actor’s purpose. The superfluous consequences may or may not be foreseeable or even immediately observable and they may be beneficial, harmful or neutral in their impact. In the best-case scenario, an action produces both the desired results and unplanned benefits; in the worst-case scenario, however, the desired results fail to materialize and there are negative consequences that make the original problem worse.

In a local Facebook group we noticed the following post : ” When do we get paid for packing our own groceries at the supermarket, is it monthly? Helping them is one thing, but they just stand there now and not pack anything. Is this part of the law? ”

Unfortunately for the poster the banning of plastic and paper bags is having many “unintended consequences”. One being grocery store employees are very uncomfortable with touching your dirty reusable bags . Let’s face it, one of the things we all learned from the pandemic is that people do not wash their hands .
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The reaction to the pandemic ie… lockdowns and mandated vaccines have clearly created many unintended consequences, again the solution to a problem was worse than the problem itself . These events sparked the “great resignation”  , and have made it very difficult for some companies to hire  forcing consumers into the role of more self-checkout .