The article points out that some things like low quality plastics are hard to recycle (and I guess they break and are hard to reuse), perhaps that's a sign that we shouldn't use them.

Knowing a cotton bag needs a put 170 uses to pay come out on top of plastic bags is a reminder to use those bags more, if I had one with me most of the time I could do that in a year and stop accumulating "bag for life" plastic bags.

I saved my plastic bags and used them as trash bags for the little bin in my bathroom. Now that my city banned single-use grocery bags, I have to buy actual trash bags made up of even thicker plastic. So those of us that use trash bags will never reach a break even point for cloth bags. Every day that we are forced to use them just adds to the already substantial energy gap that existed at day 0.