> Ask any child about whether we should allow plastic bags that pollute our water tables and oceans or paper bags that don't, and pretty much every kid will say

> Ask any child about whether we should allow plastic bags that pollute our water tables and oceans or paper bags that don't, and pretty much every kid will say paper. I suspect that'll have a lot to do with the fact that children don't go grocery shopping, and don't have to carry a bunch of items from cars, up stairs, and into their homes. They also don't give even a passing thought to the plastic bags being regularly re-used as bin liners in the home, or re-used to pick up after their dogs while on walks, or re-used for transporting items to other people's houses. Paper bags are not a reasonable alternative to plastic bags for heavy loads, wet/soiled things, times when you need to carry more than one (or maybe two) bags at a time, etc. Is it possible to manufacture an alternative bag that accomplishes all of the things that plastic bags do today? Maybe. Is such as bag widely available for the same cost? Nope. If plastic bag ban advocates want everyone onboard they'd do better to make sure that viable alternatives which are, at a minimum, at least as good as plastic bags are ready to fill in the void. Until that's the case it's going to be a massive pain to just ban what works. If plastic shopping bags were "banned" where I live, I'd just find myself needing to pay for plastic shopping bags which used to be free because I still don't have anything to replace their utility for many tasks. That'd mean that I'm producing the same amount of plastic waste as before, only now I'd be paying more and be inconvenienced in the process. Even when it comes to shopping bags used purely for shopping, many of the reusable canvas bags I've seen at stores don't hold as many items as plastic bags do, don't have handles that are as long/useful, and inconvenience me by requiring me to always have them with me and to know, in advance, how many I'm going to end up needing on every trip to the store. If you want to get people to give something up, you can spend a ton of energy and time beating the public into compliance with sticks and shaming them until they begrudgingly give up something they want, or you can just offer them something better in which case all the work is done for you. The transition from styrofoam to plastic accomplished that. No one has offered up something better.