It isn't silly. I'm a Watershed Steward on the east coast and bag bans and/or fees have irrefutably reduced the amount of plastic I have to pick out of local ri

It isn't silly. I'm a Watershed Steward on the east coast and bag bans and/or fees have irrefutably reduced the amount of plastic I have to pick out of local rivers and bays Styrofoam as well. People, for the most part, aren't just tossing their bags for them to end up in waterways, there is a complex and long path a bag takes from factory to landfill and at multiple steps along the way there are opportunities for them to fly away free as a bird. If you are a responsible consumer and dispose of your bag in a responsible manner, all it takes is one strong gust of wind to blow it into my river where I'll pick it up months later. The bans and fees should be nudging people towards reusable bags. I've been using the same four cotton reusable bags since July 2007 removing, at a minimum, 2,533 plastic bags from the waste stream-- and that's just my grocery usage. I carry an additional stuffable tote that stuffs down to the size of a deck of playing cards for convenience store purchases. Unless your objection is rooted in a pseudo-religious libertarian "free minds and free markets" stance and your ideology cannot be changed, it is self-evident given global experience that plastic (and styrofoam) reduction programs, to include bans and fees, are effective if implemented correctly and enforced.