The trick is to always have them where you will need them. I always have one or two in my backpack, in my car, in my luggage when I travel... Their size and weight is almost nothing and the only effort is putting them back after use. Which is where it occasionally fails, sure.

Would it make sense to keep those bags in your car? Or in some of your pockets even ?

> 75% of the time I forget to take a bag to my car.

Then take a bunch in the other 25%. You can just leave them in the car.

Grab a bundle right now, or whenever you’re at home and remember, and put them next to your keys, your wallet, or hang them on the handle of your door.

> I like them better as they are bigger and stronger.

Sure, use whatever you like. Just don’t let perfect be in the way of good.

> Even if I managed to get a bag, the other 75% of the time I forget to take it into the shop and leave it in my car.

Then go back to your car! It will be mildly annoying the first two times, and the third time it won’t happen. I mentioned exactly that in my comment.

> Even if I manage all of that, 25% of the time I will end up not having enough bags.

Then start bringing more. This isn’t hard. Leave the extras in your car.

Or just use the cardboard box approach I mentioned.

None of your mentioned obstacles is insurmountable. On the contrary, they are all exceedingly trivial to overcome with the tiniest amount of will to do so.

> 75% of the time I forget to take a bag to my car.

I put our reusable ones on the floor in the entrance to the garage and then that reminds me to put them back in the trunk whenever I go to the car for whatever reason. Then I always have them while out.

I've sometimes left them in the car but just excuse myself at the checkout and go fetch them while the groceries are being rung up.

Again, force yourself to go back or do without whenever you forget, and you’re going to start remembering really fast.

Additionally, don’t just take them when you know you’ll need them, do it before. Next time you need to leave your house to go somewhere, grab some and put them in your car. Done. Go put some right now next to your wallet or keys or literally on the handle of your house’s door.

Or just use the cardboard box approach I mentioned. You can’t forget to bring what’s already inside the store.

You can bring your own, non-plastic bags. I do wonder if maybe some cultures just don't have this and so the deprecation of plastic bags has left everyone quite confused.

It's a very solved problem, has been for centuries probably. You can even get some with little wheels! If you absolutely can't handle the looseness of the fruits amongst your shopping, you could use string nets.

We farm trees for paper anyway.

> in first world countries

How is that the fault of plastic wrappings and not the fault of people throwing trash onto the side of the road?

Sure plastic aren't great for the environment when we're just dumping it out there without much care. Obviously reducing waste and reusing is what we should strive for on all fronts. Demonizing one thing results in overcompensation on the flip side and we know for a fact that that's not where we want to end up either. Remember when we tried to reduce paper use as much as possible because of deforestation? Or saturated fats?

At least microplastics don't make you angry and violent that we can tell.

On the other hand, it's going to be around (relative to pre-emission levels) for a lot longer than the lead (paint gets chipped off and disposed of, we stopped using it in end-consumer products, etc)

30mpg, 10 miles, means two pounds of gasoline, 910grams, knock off or add 100g for ethanol per your preference, a google says about 5grams per bag, so nearly 200 bags.

Nowhere close to 10k, but nontrivial. And, this gets reduced and sometimes outright negated if you reuse the bag. Doesn't mean we shouldn't evaluate if plastic shopping bags are the beat choice though.

I don't think replacing them with store bought doggy poo and cat litter bags is better. It's not a reduction and theres no reuse. If you find yourself discarding them outright, then find an alternative I guess.

it's about rubber tires that shed a lot of micro plastic

That's such an American fear.

Wash it (as you should anyways) and you'll be fine ...

As someone who works in a market, eating anything without cooking or washing it first is a bad idea. Most of it is fine, but people are disgusting and there's no way of knowing how many people have touched your apple, if someone's kid managed to lick it without you noticing, or someone managed to push everything off the shelf onto the nonslip mat before they got stopped. Bagged produce can be even worse, given the amount of condensation inside the bag after it warms up on the loading dock and then sits in the cooler. The mister above the fresh greens and such doesn't do much and they regularly get touched and knocked out. The potatoes are probably the best, as the dirt on them is obvious.

If you live in an area with entitled people and spineless corporate rules that don't allow stores to confront people over pets, that's instantly worse than everything else combined. Pets like to lie on the floor, someone's dog has peed on the floor, 5 different random people have petted hugged or picked up that dog and 3 others since they left the house. One of those people is probably a cashier who then handles every item you've bought. And then someone inhaled pet hair and sneezed.

Sorry--I don't understand the risk. Are you concerned about germs? Pesticides? Other?

I hate to break it to you, but the loose produce in store isn't clean. That's why you must wash produce before you eat it.

Japan recycles but also a whole bunch of their waste is incinerated. I think they super-heat it to reduce emissions but guessing that also costs energy which also secondarily causes emissions.

Most of that plastic can't be recycled so it's probably being burned or thrown away.

Japan incinerates most of their plastic.

> See also "flushable" wipes that must not be flushed down the toilet.

That really should be prosecuted for false advertising. Just because I can physically flush Orbeez down the toilet doesn't mean it's safe to do so.

I'd assume those bags would be okay considering they break down after a few days of holding compostable materials, and frequently make a mess in the compost bin. The "compostable" cutlery is definitely not compostable under normal household situations though.

My understanding is most manicipal compost facilities can handle them - the vast majority of manicipalities don't have a facility at all. They are expensive. A home pile won't compost them, a pile at manicipal size is likely a health hazzard and so not a good option.

I thought it was all PLA:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingeo

I think there's also "biodegradable" plastic which has cornstarch in it which allows bacteria to degrade it, but that's not the same thing?

Compostable plastics don't compost if you just throw them in a compost heap, you need to compost them in high-temperature conditions.

yeah I mentioned municipal compost because they can get the compost temperature way higher than we can at home scale. It should break down in the big compost piles they have

Where I live they have scales that tare at the beginning as part of the process of using your own bag.

Are bags so heavy that you need to tare them out?