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My dad is getting older and often forgets to bring reusable bags when he goes shopping. As a result, he ends up buying new ones every time, adding to a growing stockpile of unused bags at home. On the other hand, I’ve adapted by buying less and only purchasing what I can carry by hand to avoid needing a bag altogether.

This feels (but I cannot say if it "is" without proper data) like a lose-lose situation: individuals either end up purchasing more bags (which defeats the purpose of reusables) or, like me, change their shopping habits in ways that might not be ideal for businesses themselves who would wish I spend more. I’ve also noticed more people skipping supermarket trips entirely and ordering everything online from places like Walmart or Amazon, which often deliver in boxes or reusable bags anyway.

It seems there isn’t a big-picture solution beyond individuals like me reducing consumption as much as possible—not necessarily out of environmental consciousness, but because it’s now more of a hassle to consume unnecessarily.

> I’ve also noticed more people skipping supermarket trips entirely and ordering everything online from places like Walmart or Amazon, which often deliver in boxes or reusable bags anyway

Yes. My mother in law struggles to walk so she prefers to order groceries online now. Walmart always delivers them in reusable bags, so there's a stockpile there. The outcome is she's started to use them as bin liners just like we used to use single use bags from the grocery store

This is a big part of why I think some kind of bag return system needs to be in place. No one needs hundreds of reusable bags, but they will accumulate any time you're at a store without one so what do you do with them?

I think you have misread the article and that the outcome you think "should have been kind of obvious" is not what actually happened and in fact, could not have happened in one of the two cases.

You seem to think that people used more single-use plastic grocery bags after they were either banned outright, which could not have happened, or were made available for a fee, which you seem to want to attribute to stores having an incentive to increase the number of them that people used.

But that's not what happened. After the grocery bags were banned or available for sale, people did not use more plastic grocery bags, but instead started buying more plastic trash bags. The supposition seems to be that people were previously re-using grocery bags for trash, but when they had fewer or no grocery bags available, they bought more plastic trash bags than they did before.

Whether this is an improvement in any sense is a different question. My point is that your conception of what happened here and why seems completely wrong.

>> "Stores switched from having an incentive to give out as few plastic bags as possible to save money to having an incentive to give out as many as possible to make money"

The large stores around me (in a free plastic bag zone) have no trouble putting one or two items in every bag. I do not think there is any incentive to cut back use. I think there may be more incentive to use more of the super cheap plastic bags to cut back on time to bag and complaints about how things are packed.

>> "need a bag take a bag, have a bag leave a bag"

sounds good. I often forget to bring re-usable bags but do not want to buy more. I like to have a stock of disposable bags at home to use as trash bags (buying trash bags is to much like throwing money in the trash). I often have an over stock of them though.