vlog environmental economics major Abrielle Silva ’26 won the New York State Economics Association Undergraduate Paper Contest on Saturday, Nov. 8, in Rochester, N.Y. Abrielle’s paper, titled “Disposable Bag Bans and Waste Disposal in California,” uses the staggered rollout of disposable plastic bag bans in California to measure their causal impact on waste generation, finding that the policy is ineffective at reducing waste.
Abrielle wrote the paper as part of Econ 483: Seminar in Resource and Environmental Economics last spring. She continued her research on this topic over the summer, embarking on an ambitious project to gather a national dataset of disposable bag policies in the United States, and she is currently working on an honors thesis examining the impact of disposable bag policies on the economic outcomes of recycling facilities across the United States.