I don't have any statistics on this, but I feel like I see far fewer plastic bags littering the streets these days. That alone is a win for me personally.
Give it time and you'll be seeing plenty of the reusable bags littering instead
In theory they are supposed to be reusable but in practice I think they are going to wind up being single-use for most people. Maybe we'll start using them as garbage bags as they accumulate around the house.
Yeah, my bag use hasn't changed at all, except instead of getting 3 to 6 lightweight plastic bags on each trip, I spend an extra quarter, and get 3-6 heavy plastic bags on each trip. Very much a net loss, as they have to use at least five times the material.
(When paper bags aren't available. I've always preferred paper.)
Product packaging probably generates 1-2 orders of magnitude more waste than the bags holding the product.
I live in an area that's banned plastic bags. Given enough experience, grabbing a reusable bag out of the car before going into the store became an unconscious programmed action.
Unless you empty your groceries in your car to leave the bags there, at some point bags need to make it from your house to your car, so that you have some to take into the store.
That's the part I struggle with.
Also, if you order groceries for delivery, they bring your order in reusable bags. Which you then keep.
My point is these re-usable bags have a tendency to accumulate over time. Maybe not at the same rate as plastic bags would otherwise, but once you have dozens of these bags at home it starts to be tempting to just use them as bin liners and toss them, just like we did with plastic bags
Which sort of defeats the whole purpose, right? The ideal is people would buy as many as they need and use them for years.
But that isn't going to happen any time soon imo. If ever.
