The Wall Street Journal - 21.03.2020 - 22.03.2020

A2| Saturday/Sunday, March 21 - 22, 2020 **** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

marriage licenses. They walked

in the minute the government

offices opened and hope to go

through with a small ceremony

next month.

Raj Machhar and Rachna

Randhawa spent the last year

planning a wedding with 460

people that was set for this

weekend at a resort in Orlando,

Fla. As the outbreak escalated,

the couple worried about family

members traveling from Seat-

tle, the U.K., Switzerland and

India. Dr. Machhar’s cousin was

on a jet bridge in Mumbai about

to board his flight last week

when an airline official told him

he would not be able to re-enter

India until mid-April at the ear-

liest. The cousin went home.

When it became clear their

ophonist draws laughs by play-

ing through a hole in his surgi-

cal mask.

Even if a big party is off, a

quickie wedding is no guaran-

tee either. Krista Evans, 30, an

information technology worker

and nurse at a San Francisco

hospital, did a lot of work for

her wedding herself, including

using the Japanese Shibori

technique to tie-dye runners for

the tables. She still wanted to

get married on April 4, but

learned that City Hall in San

Francisco was no longer per-

forming ceremonies.

So she and her fiancé, James

Longinotti, 31, rose at dawn re-

cently and drove to the clerk

recorder’s office in Santa Rosa,

Calif., that was still issuing

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A similar phenomenon has

been observed in the U.S.

California’s bag ban, ap-

proved in 2016, led to the

elimination of 40 million

pounds of single-use plastic

bags. But the savings were

offset by a 12-million-pound

increase in trash-bag pur-

chases.

Sales of small, medium

and tall trash bags increased

by 120%, 64% and 6%, re-

spectively, according to an

economist at the University

of Sydney who studied the

effect of the regulation.

While consumers have

Paper or

plastic?

This month,

New York

joined the list

of places that

have banned single-use plas-

tic shopping bags out of con-

cern for the environment.

But the choice is more

complicated than it sounds.

Independent studies con-

ducted from 2010 through

2019 by researchers in the

U.S., the U.K., Continental

Europe, Asia and elsewhere

all concluded that single-use

plastic bags—like the ones

commonly found in grocery

stores—rank better in almost

every environmental cate-

gory than bags made of pa-

per, cotton or more durable

plastics.

All the reports agree that

the extraction and produc-

tion of raw materials re-

quired to make carrier bags

have the greatest effect on

their environmental perfor-

mance. But not all of the

studies considered the harm-

fuleffectsoflitter,aprimary

concern of environmental-

ists.

And in that category, sin-

gle-use plastic bags are the

worst.

World-wide, one trillion to

five trillion plastic bags are

used each year, according to

the United Nations. They’re

among the top 10 items that

litter beaches. And evidence

of marine mammals harmed

by the waste—including

dead whales engorged with

plastic—has helped generate

support for bans on the dis-

posable carriers.

But bag bans have led to

some unexpected conse-

quences.

E

vidence suggests that

consumers may not

employ reusable bags

often enough to benefit the

environment, and doing

away with single-use bags

has caused some to purchase

heavier bags for secondary

tasks they previously re-

served for the ones that

were banned.

“A lot of single-use bags

are used to dispose of rubbish

in the kitchen,” said Simon

Aumônier, whose consulting

firm Environmental Resources

Management analyzed differ-

ent types of carrier bags for

the Environment Agency for

England and Wales. “As they

are no longer available, you

see an increase in the number

of dedicated rubbish bags

bought instead. Is that, over-

all, a good outcome or a less

good outcome?”

ing Americans not to gather

with more than 10 people at a

time. Many couples are spend-

ing their wedding days haggling

for refunds, begging for credits

or eating pizza in their sweat-

pants.

Katie Monnin, who post-

poned her wedding ceremony at

a New Zealand winery next

week, has spent the last few

days boxing up wedding sup-

plies at home in Las Vegas, stor-

ing her custom-made shoes and

the groom’s suit with the date of

their intended ceremony, March

24, stitched into the lining.

“I feel like I’m packing up an

old boyfriend’s stuff,” she says.

To console herself, she and fi-

ancé Corey Loomis are getting a

puppy—“a ‘your wedding is can-

celed, here’s an emotional sup-

port puppy,’ ” she says of the

chocolate Lab mix they decided

to name Nova. “We thought ‘Co-

rona’ was too on the nose.”

Some weddings managed to

go on, just under the lockdown

wire, or with guest lists pared

down to a few people. Across

the internet, newlyweds pose

for photos in protective gear. In

an online video, a wedding sax-

Continued from Page One

we have to get married in our

officiant’s backyard with his

two goats, that’s what we’ll do,”

Ms. Krauss said in a recent

phone call. Her future husband

could be heard in the back-

ground: “Dammit, we will get

married!”

On Sunday, when the Cen-

ters for Disease Control and

Prevention advised against so-

cial gatherings of more than 50

people, Ms. Krauss and Mr.

Hancock, 23, cut their guest list

to just family members for

their wedding. But even that

still came to 75 people, leaving

them with the prospect of

snubbing 25 relatives. They

were almost relieved the next

day when the limits on crowds

tightened to 10 people.

The couple, who cut their

$10,000 party short by two

hours, is sitting on enough craft

beer and wine for 120 people.

And they have to eat the cost of

250 fancy pretzels for the re-

ception. (They will donate the

snacks to a good cause.)

Sydney Styler and her fiancé

hope to keep their April 4 wed-

ding date. The 25-year-old real-

estate agent will reschedule a

bigger reception later, but be-

fore then, she dreams of gather-

ing two people from each side

of her wedding party and both

sets of parents in a field sur-

rounded by green hills near her

Southern California home, gov-

ernment restrictions permitting.

She is so excited to exchange

vows she doesn’t even mind the

location: a city named Corona.

wedding wouldn’t happen as

planned, Dr. Machhar created

an elaborate calendar to track

the availability of their guests

and their roughly 18 wedding

vendors. They are thinking

about a new date in October.

The Sikh and Hindu couple

will keep the wedding outfits

they bought on a trip to India

with their moms last year. They

will keep their two wedding

ceremonies, two priests, two ca-

tering companies and two bhar-

ats—the traditional entrance

for the groom—so Dr. Machhar

can arrive at the Sikh ceremony

on a horse and the Hindu cere-

mony in a sports car. One of the

few changes will be the content

of their wedding speech, which

now will contain an oblique ref-

erence to the pandemic. “We’re

just keeping things in perspec-

tive,” says Dr. Machhar, 31, an

attending physician at NYU

Langone Health in New York.

“We’re counting our blessings.”

Some couples don’t want to

give up wedding dates that they

have obsessed about for

months. Ms. Krauss and Mr.

Hancock, who will be joined by

a small wedding party while

streaming their vows and re-

ception, were determined to

keep their ceremony this Satur-

day, 3/21 or 3-2-1.

Ms. Krauss, a 23-year-old

graduate student from Win-

ston-Salem, N.C., notes that her

high-school volleyball jersey

number was three, and the

wedding is in the third week of

the third month of the year. “If

of workers rushing to claim

unemployment benefits fol-

lowed, and many states re-

ported the largest increases in

claims they have ever seen.

Ohio released updated fig-

ures on Friday morning show-

ing jobless claims rose to nearly

140,000 through Thursday, com-

pared with about 5,000 for the

same period last week. By noon

Thursday, New York’s website to

register for benefits had about

200,000 logins. The state’s La-

bor Department website is aver-

aging more than 250,000 logins

each day, a 400% increase over

the normal average.

States continued releasing

unemployment-claims figures

despite a request from the

Trump administration to re-

frain before the publication of

national weekly U.S. jobless

claims by the Labor Depart-

ment on Thursdays.

A Labor Department

spokesperson said state data

are regularly embargoed until

the national numbers are pub-

lished on Thursday mornings.

Asking states to withhold

claims reports “strikes me as

being really unusual,” said

Keith Hall, a Republican econ-

omist who served as commis-

sioner of the Bureau of Labor

Statistics under President

George W. Bush and later as

director of the Congressional

Budget Office.

An unparalleled number of

Americans filed for unemploy-

ment benefits this week as the

coronavirus pandemic shut

down businesses and left

many people without a job,

economists say.

State-level anecdotes sug-

gest applications for unem-

ployment benefits—a proxy for

layoffs—could hit more than

2 million in next Thursday’s

Labor Department report, the

largest weekly increase in job-

less claims and the highest

level on record, according to a

note from Goldman Sachs.

A panel of economists sur-

veyed by The Wall Street Jour-

nal projected that 875,000 new

jobless claims would be filed

for the week ending Saturday.

That would easily exceed the

record 695,000 claims filed in

the week ended Oct. 2, 1982.

Claims had been trending

near a 50-year low for the

past 12 months. In the week

ended March 7, 211,000 new

claims were filed. Last week,

the figure rose to 281,000.

States and localities have

been ordering businesses, such

as restaurants and bars, to

temporarily close to protect

against the spread of new cor-

onavirus, immediately hitting

parts of the economy. A wave

BYSARAHCHANEY

ANDERICMORATH

Jobless Claims Soar as

Virus Shuts Businesses

CALIFORNIA

Plácido Domingo

Quits Opera Union

Superstar Plácido Domingo re-

signed from the U.S. union that

represents opera singers and will

contribute $500,000 to sexual-

harassment eradication programs

and a fund that helps opera em-

ployees in crisis, the union said

Friday.

The development came weeks

after investigations by the Ameri-

can Guild of Musical Artists and

Los Angeles Opera found sexual-

harassment allegations against the

79-year-old tenor, to be credible.

Multiple women accused Mr. Do-

mingo of harassment and abusing

his power while he held manage-

ment positions at two companies.

—Associated Press

WISCONSIN

Man Is Charged

With Killing Student

A 53-year-old man was

charged Friday in the 2008 killing

of a University of Wisconsin-

Madison student who was found

strangled and stabbed in her

downtown apartment.

David Kahl was charged with

first-degree intentional homicide

as a party to a crime and by use

of a dangerous weapon. The

charges come 12 years after the

April 2, 2008, death of 21-year-

old Brittany Zimmermann, whose

killing rocked the city of Madison.

Mr. Kahl was in custody Friday

on a drunken-driving offense and

didn’t have an attorney in the

murder case.

—Associated Press

Coronavirus

Crashes

Weddings

Krista Evans and James Longinotti rose at dawn on a recent

morning to get a marriage license the minute the office opened.

KRISTA EVANS

been encouraged to turn to

reusable bags made of stur-

dier plastic or natural fibers

to diminish the harm caused

by single-use plastic bags,

even in the absence of a bag

ban, these durable carriers

need to be reused many

times to compensate for the

greater environmental costs

of making the bags.

A cotton bag must be

used 50 to 150 times, accord-

ing to the U.N., which con-

ducted a meta-analysis of

carrier-bag studies. A sturdy

polypropylene bag must be

used 10 to 20 times. And a

paper bag must be used four

to eight times.

If the single-use plastic

bags are reused—for shop-

ping or as bin liners—the

other bags must be used

more times to keep up.

Even well-intentioned

consumers don’t necessarily

do this.

“We see in the U.K. very,

very high rates of the pur-

chase of reusable bags,” Mr.

Aumônier said. “It suggests

people buy a lot and then

leave them at home or leave

them in the car and buy

more in the store.”

Or, if it’s an option, they

revert to single-use bags.

But Mr. Aumônier raises a

provocative question: Are

the bags to blame for envi-

ronmental hazards, or the

consumers?

“We wouldn’t have the

same degree of problems if

people responsibly disposed

of the waste at the end of its

life,” Mr. Aumônier said.

A

2018 Danish study

found that, from an

environmental point

of view, it’s best to recycle

or incinerate carrier bags

when it’s time to throw them

out.

In the U.S., most are di-

verted to landfills.

In 2017, the country gen-

erated 4.14 million tons of

plastic bags, sacks and

wraps, according to the Envi-

ronmental Protection

Agency. When they were dis-

carded, more than 3 million

tons went to landfills; 0.

million tons were inciner-

ated; and 0.39 million tons

were recycled.

The report didn’t estimate

how many escaped into the

environment.

So, given all of the trade-

offs, which bag is best?

According to the U.N., it’s

the one you already have at

home—no matter what it’s

made of.

Just make sure you use it

alot.

THE NUMBERS|By Jo Craven McGinty

What Happens When Plastic Gets the Sack?

=1use

Nonwoven

polypropylene

34 10

9

5

1

Low-density

polyethylene

Paper (40% recycled content)

Paper (100% recycled content)

Single-use plastic bags

Number of times alternatives must be used to have

the same environmental impact as a single-use

plastic bag, by type*

*High-density polyethylene bag assuming no secondary use

Source: Robert M. Kimmel, Clemson University Kathryn Tam/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL