The paper bags were roomier and about half had those cord handles so they weren't really difficult to carry and the ONLY advantage plastic has over paper is on a rainy day.
Modern Americans, for the most part shop where they ride to, whether car or public transportation and ALL supermarkets have buggys so gettin' your stuff (remember George Carlin) out to the car and into it is not a chore nor dangerous to the paper bag.
No, doing away with plastic will shut a LOT of greeny weeny mouths.
Stores can provide plastic on rain days and paper all the rest.
You may be old enough to remember how they howled about killing the rain forests to make paper bags (As if old growth tropical hardwood forests were being clear-cut for the pulp mills) when they were all about saving the trees and demanded an end to paper grocery bags.
But the problem with plastic bags is : where do they go when you are finished with them? You put them in the trash and once a week or so someone comes around and collects them, along with the rest of the trash wrapped in plastic, and takes it all away.
To where?
They may be filling up the canyons and valleys around where you live. I live on an island. There's no room to put it.
Where I live, we are required to pick up our dog poop. Small plastic bags are provided for the purpose. To keep the town neat and tidy, we pick up the poop, seal it in a plastic bag and drop in in a handy trash receptacle(lined with a plastic bag). It is then collected and taken to the baler facility where it is crushed into bales with the rest of the trash and shipped to Seattle.
Yes. We seal our dog poop in plastic bags and ship it to Seattle.
What do they do with it in Seattle? Who cares? It's gone from here.
The answer is, as far as I can tell from sailing back and forth between here and Hawaii a few times, it goes in the ocean.
To me, and I could be wrong about this, it's insane.
Plastic trash is a real problem with more than 8 billion people on the planet. At least paper bags decompose over time. < / rant >
“No, doing away with plastic will shut a LOT of greeny weeny mouths.”
No it won’t.
They’ll just latch on to another non-issue as their issue.
No it won't. They will just move on to their next outrage over packaged foods on the grocery shelves. Plants that make paper bags and cardboard containers will be the next "enemies of the environment".
There is always another campaign waiting to start.