The old bags also averaged slightly over one use, but the mandatory "bag of bags" in the pantry got depleted much more slowly than it filled.
If someone is throwing their reusable bags in the landfill and getting new ones every time, they're using it wrong...which I admit isn't entirely their fault at this societal scale, but let's at least agree it's the expected way to use the tool.
Maybe you get a few cents back when you return them?
My area also mandates municipal composting so the discussion of "But is it _really_ compostable" is moot.
i'm not joking, look it up
Energy usage of shopping bags isn’t that big of a deal. The trash created after use is.
the issue with paper mills is not their energy consumption, which generally is fueled by the same biomass they process (and is thus carbon-neutral), but the toxic waste they produce
do the math instead of just posting stuff without thinking
Maybe we shouldn't necessarily ban them, but we should definitely tax them to make people question "do I really need that bag?"
Either way, we can also have regulations protecting against paper mill pollution. It's not like we have to have one or the other. We can do both!
But in the end my argument is we should do much to eliminate the wastefulness of single-use bags in general. Not that we should substitute one for another. Quit throwing so much shit away every day of your life is my argument.
I fully acknowledge there's absolutely useful places for disposable things. Medical equipment, certain kinds of packaging, etc makes a lot of sense; there's often not really any good alternatives. But being given a throw away bag after buying a pack of gum is a simple example of the egregiousness of our throw away culture.
Go kayaking on most rivers in the US and get absolutely inundated with single use plastic trash of the worst kinds and continue telling me how bad doing anything is. Fuck single use plastic shopping bags, I can't wait to see them disappear.
I use them as trash bags for the various small trashcans in the home (office, bathroom, etc). Works great.
Also fantastic for any trash (like fish) you have that you don't want stinking up the big trash can for several days and needs to be taken out asap.
For home grocery delivery, I could imagine that using stackable or collapsible crates or similar containers might even make more sense, assuming the delivery is via car/truck. Why stick to a container optimized for walk-out customers at all?
I think the biggest change is mostly in perception. Old plastic bags were lighter and blew around so they were very visible. The newer heavier "reusable" plastic bags use a significant amount more of plastic - they are heavy enough to stay near where they get dropped and sink to the bottoms of puddles. You don't see them floating around in the wind but they still get littered a ton.
In the UK everything is slightly dirty, but then there are these significant piles of garbage that just go unattended and grow in size. I think it shocked me when I first moved there. Years of rubbish in some areas, months in others, and it would be right in front of peoples houses and parks.
The UK really got left behind in terms of quality of life at some point. GDP doesn't buy nice living. I'm sure it's similar in other parts of (wealthy) Europe.
There are also so many other product container types than plastic: Glass, metal cans (ok, these are often plastic-coated and I don't know how recycling for these works, but it seems to be possible), paper... It doesn't work for everything, but it does for many things – assuming the right incentives are in place.