CARICOM Trash Bag Market Reaches USD 27.14 Million in 2025, Built by Bans on a Different Bag — Pheonix Research

Pheonix Research has published a market report on the CARICOM trash bag market, sizing it at USD 27.14 million and 6.24 thousand tonnes in 2025, rising to USD 36.86 million and 7.66 thousand tonnes by 2033 — a 3.94% value CAGR and a 2.60% volume CAGR.

The market has an unusual cause. It is growing because nineteen Caribbean jurisdictions each took a national decision about a different bag. A single-use carrier bag had a second life as a bin liner, and prohibiting the carrier did not remove the bin from the household.

A substitution the regulation never names

The mechanism is measurable. Scanner-data research on US carryout-bag rules, published in Environmental and Resource Economics in 2022, puts the resulting increase in purchased trash bag plastic at 127 pounds per store per month on average, and materially larger for bigger liner sizes — 30 to 135 pounds for four-gallon liners against 37 to 224 pounds for eight-gallon.

Jamaica’s Trade (Plastic Packaging Materials Prohibition) Order, 2018 shows why the substitution is close to mechanical. It restricts bags not exceeding 610 mm by 610 mm and not exceeding 0.03 mm in thickness, raised to 0.06 mm from January 2021, and it applies regardless of whether the bag is degradable, biodegradable, oxo-degradable, photodegradable or compostable. Biopolymer stock has no shelter. The only way to be lawful is to be large, and a large bag is a liner.

Almost none of the value stays in the region

Of USD 41.06 million and 16.60 thousand tonnes of HS 392.321 entering nine CARICOM markets in 2023, only 10.46% was intra-regional, and all of it originated in Trinidad and Tobago. China supplied 84.75% of Jamaica’s tonnage at USD 1.62 per kilogram, while Trinidadian bags entered Barbados at USD 3.43 per kilogram — a 3.56-fold unit-value spread inside one six-digit tariff line inside one customs union. A five-micron carrier-grade bag and a 40-micron contractor liner are traded under the same code and are not substitutes.

Supply is equally concentrated. Six converters in Trinidad and Tobago operate the film extrusion and bag-making capacity that serves the region, and all six list refuse or garbage bags as a product line. Trinidad and Tobago holds 65.58% of Saint Lucia’s imports, 39.69% of Barbados’ and 36.64% of Antigua and Barbuda’s, while holding only 12.83% of Jamaica’s and 17.06% of Guyana’s — the two markets large enough to justify direct container programmes from Asia.

The rule that built the demand was written across the region’s importers. The manufacturing capacity sits in the one significant member state that never adopted a carrier-bag ban.

Risk is written in millimetres

No CARICOM instrument names refuse sacks, bin liners or trash bags. No instrument sets a capacity threshold. The liner is lawful because it is large, not because anyone decided it should be — and 46.0% of market volume sits in the 15 to 25 micron band, lawful on dimension and marginal on gauge. Extend the dimensional test, add a capacity limb of the kind France used at ten litres, or name refuse sacks explicitly, and almost half the market moves from lawful to restricted in one gazette.

Regulatory complexity is assessed as high across nineteen jurisdictions with four distinct policy stances. Geopolitical exposure is assessed as high: every pellet is imported, and the market carries full exposure to polyethylene pricing, US dollar availability and island freight. Substitution risk to the product itself is assessed as moderate. Overall market risk is assessed as moderate.

Three cases to 2033

The fast case reaches 8.03 thousand tonnes and USD 40.71 million by 2033, a 5.20% value CAGR, on a member state extending its dimension or capacity test to the liner, or on Trinidad and Tobago legislating the carrier-bag ban it has so far only discussed. The base case holds existing instruments and steady enforcement at 7.66 thousand tonnes and USD 36.86 million, 3.94%. The slow case lands at 6.39 thousand tonnes and USD 29.86 million, a 1.20% value CAGR, if enforcement lapses and exempt tiers continue supplying free liners.

The counter-argument, stated

Jamaica’s exemption list is as consequential as its prohibition. Bags used to distribute raw meat, eggs, flour, sugar, rice and baked goods remain lawful and free at the point of receipt, and those bags are functionally liner-sized in a minority of cases. That is the strongest argument against assuming a complete substitution, and it is why the base case lands at 2.60% volume rather than at the fast case’s 3.20%.

The full analysis — including the nineteen-jurisdiction regulatory table, the eleven-lane import price ladder, the six-converter competitive structure, the segment forecast and the scenario model — is published as CARICOM Trash Bag Market Size, Share and Forecast 2026–2033: The Bag Ban Built the Liner Market.

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