Many countries in Asia and around the world have already regulated so-called ‘single-use’ plastic bags out of existence, or have imposed strong disincentives to their use that are likely just steps along the way to banning them completely. Enforcement has been a bit patchy to say the least, and because consumers love them for their convenience and ease of use some retailers still dole them out. In any event, the phrase ‘single-use’ was always a concoction because it simply ignores basic consumer behavior: the bags are, or at least were, strong enough to reuse and adapt for other purposes. Who didn’t re-employ one of these single-use bags for lining the kitchen waste bin, picking up the dog’s poop, storing seasonal items in the garden shed and segregating dirty laundry in the travel bag? These sundry uses substituted for alternative solutions that were more expensive, more trouble, and possibly more environmentally damaging in their production and disposal.Who is asking the tough questions?A small but growing number of individuals are brave enough to ask difficult questions. Among those who have been monitoring the plastic bag issue for years is Adam Summers, a Research Fellow at the Independent Institute, a public policy think-tank in Oakland, California. Writing in early February under the title “The Plastic Bag Racket”, Summers argued that the benefits of the bag bans had been grossly overstated and their disadvantages ignored or downplayed. He may very well have a point. He cites data, including a 2018 study commissioned by the Danish government’s Environmental Protection Agency, finding that the new generation of bags made from various kinds of plastic, paper and cotton and now sold by retailers rather than given away like the old ‘single-use’ bags, need to be reused many times more than commonly understood in order to be environmentally beneficial. Worst offenders of the 14 different kinds of bags included in the study were those handsome organic cotton bags, which needed to be reused up to 20,000 times. The polyethylene and polypropylene plastic bags now being sold by grocery stores have to be reused as many as 52 times. (In reality, they are often left behind when shoppers go to the supermarket, forcing them to buy more and in a lot of cases having them just accumulate in the kitchen cupboard.)Summers also pointed out that bans on single-use bags resulted in markedly increased demand for substitutes, such as plastic bin liner bags. In California, which has been among the most aggressive movers against single-use bags, plastic bag waste per capita has increased rather than decreased since the old bags were banned. That is an incredible failure of public policy and consumers paid for it.So why did the supermarket chains and other retailers roll over? Certainly, the potential for a new income stream may have had something to do with it. Dangerous liaisonsThe plastic bag issue sits neatly inside a broader regulatory thicket that now includes mandatory ESG/DEI reporting in a growing number of countries.For example, the Singapore stock exchange (SGX) has now followed the lead of the European Union and the US in requiring more onerous ESG/DEI reporting requirements. The SGX now mandates that listed companies include an accounting of their ESG and DEI performance in their annual reports. There is actually no universally agreed methodology that enables anyone to accurately quantify the performance of a company and compare it with others on an apples-to-apples basis. This doesn’t faze institutions like the SGX, which recommends more than two dozen metrics companies should generate to enable investors and consumers to ‘score’ them. Some of these metrics can at least be roughly estimated, for example water consumption, while others are so fraught with difficulty they can amount to fluff. In any event, it is all too easy to game: estimates of things like a company’s carbon footprint are a good example. Listed retailers and mall operators are going along with it, some because they have to and others because they see it as an opportunity to get a leg up on smaller competitors since the significant compliance costs involved are easier for larger companies to carry. In this way, what we are seeing is an unholy joint venture between government bureaucracies and large corporations that diverts valuable resources away from productive uses.Another group that sees in all this a chance to siphon off financial gains are all the consulting and law firms that can go to companies and advise them on how they can measure and improve their ESG/DEI performance and, in the case of companies in developing countries, bring them up to speed with their peers in the West. The fund managers are in on the game tooFund managers can use the ESG/DEI reporting to bundle firms into ‘ESG funds’ or ‘sustainable funds’, and charge fat fees for the privilege of investing in them. It is important to understand that the fund managers are not particularly interested in greening the globe: the role of the reports from their standpoint will be to allow them to get a handle on which companies will be in a better position to prosper in the tightening regulatory environment, which is to say the same companies who are best at producing the voluminous and fantastical ESG/DEI reports! Note also that many of the fund investors are government or semi-government entities, such as public pension funds, who are obvious conduits for political agendas. Can you see the problem here?Sadly, ESG/DEI reporting is not so much a vehicle for environmental and social improvement as it is a valuable mechanism for big companies to turn the screws on smaller ones while getting them cozier with the governments whose agendas they are parroting because it pays with political favors. Consumers are the playthings in this alliance: they have their money in funds that are being used for virtual-signalling.Time for some pushback?Retailers and mall operators have been ‘going with the flow’ but they are certainly not alone in dutifully indulging the crusaders with some truly fanciful ESG/DEI reports, and in handing them easy victories with things like the single-use bags. Is it time for the retail industry to knuckle down and really look at this stuff from a truly consumer-centric viewpoint? A good start could be made by stripping away the layers of HR that are employed to embed the worst excesses of the ESG/DEI industry into the fabric of otherwise productive companies.And as for the shopping bags, the scientific basis for the bag bans was always shaky, ignoring both the full lifecycle of the bags and consumer behavior. It’s probably too late to bring the old bags back, but it isn’t too late to prevent the next mistake in the name of protecting the planet, and the one after that.