Aa with most environmental question it is always a question about what to count and how to value it. E.g. when a plastic bag is slowly mechanically ground into

Aa with most environmental question it is always a question about what to count and how to value it. E.g. when a plastic bag is slowly mechanically ground into microplastic by the wind, weather and UV radiation how much would it cost to collect the microplastic from that single bag and remove it from the environment? Depending on how you go about this the number can range from zero (we don't care) to cents (some effort to remove microplastics, juet not by that specific bag) to astronomical numbers if you really try to retriebe every particle — an endeavour where the cleanup would probably be worse for the environment than just leaving it there. If you want to get a grasp of how that would look like read about various cleanups thar happend after nuclear accidents. The thing is, that there is no "correct" number here. It depends on what you want to do. If you are a oil company, saying microplastics are an non-issue and consumers have to be responsible is probably the best route. Now there are no fully conclusive results on the long term effects of microplastics on humans yet, but we have good evidence it is harmful for ecosystems. Now again you can ask the question how much is an ecosystem worth? How much do we want to spend to keep them clean? What about accumlative effects? We have been using plastics only for a century max and if we add them to the environment, but never remove them, what will that do? That aspect of microparticles is a problem that is much more controllable with textile tote bags, especially if they are made from hemp, cotton or similar natural fibers that decompose faster in the environment. We could take the risk and use some favourable numbers for plastics, but we could also just play it safe. Additionally if you use three tote bags for 30 years, like my grandmother, how would the equivalent mass in single use plastic bags look like? Let's do the math: 5g is the weight of an average plastic bag, if you only used those for every purchase you would probably use like 400 a year, or 2kg plastics. Multiply by the thirty year period and you get 60 kg of waste plastics versus maybe 1kg of textile for the tote bags (that are still working tote bags if you treat them right and sew them if broken).