The original paper’s not on sci-hub so I can’t read it, but I highly doubt that.

It seems to be based on survey data, so it’s already suspect, and none of the coverage of this mentions the obvious question: did they also track for increases in purchases of grocery sized bags by consumers?

Because we got rid of plastic grocery bags here, but people still need to line their small home garbage cans, so they end up buying a box of small plastic grocery sized bags instead.

It may still have helped reduce their usage overall, as MD bags optimized as bin liners might be able to be thinner and less robust, but I seriously doubt they’re tracking all that if they’re seeing numbers like 91%.