You make excellent points, though as a former plastics recycling plant owner, let me hasten to warn that almost all plastic grocery bags end up in landfills and don’t get recycled. Particularly today with the economies of plastics recycling being what they are. Profit margins for recycling grocery bags are paper thin, pardon the pun, and few people even bother to try making money at it anymore.

When I lived in Berlin in the 1980s, everybody already used their own shopping bags, usually cloth or a nice net fabric. Every household kept multiple shopping bags, often right up by the front door where people could grab them on their way out to the shops. Often, people expressed their personalities by buying shopping bags in particular colors or patterns, or with particular messaging. Some people even decorated their own! Even way back then, I occasionally saw Pride rainbows on shopping bags.

I was pretty surprised when I got back to the United States and everybody had switched from paper to plastic and nobody considered using their own permanent shopping bags. I couldn’t believe how wasteful it was.

Later still, when I got into plastics recycling, I couldn’t believe how destructive all those plastic bags are to the Earth.

Sorry to concentrate on just that one point, when you’re beautiful article is about so much more. But I thought I should kick in!