My experience is that Iceland, Faroe, Norway and Irish Republic are 'no free bag' areas. In UK some stores (mainly the continental ones) don't give them either.

My Safeway grocery store has a container where you can put your excess plastic bags to be recycled.

However, I guess I'm one of those raging lefties! I bought cloth bags ten or fifteen years ago, and I normally use them when I shop. They hold more groceries than either paper or plastic, and they make excellent sense environmentally. I just keep them in the trunk of my car, so they're handy when I need them.

When I'm in Europe, I use a bookstore bag of about the same size as my grocery bags.

I doubt plastic bags in supermarkets would disappear without some form of legislation. Supermarkets would Hate us to limit our spending to how much will fit in the bags we brought with us.

Thoouh here in Australia, you can buy very sturdy cloth bags for only 99c so if you do overspend, it's easy to add another green bag to your collection. The trick is to remember to get them out of the car!

We haven't had free plastic bags at the supermarkets I shop at in the Dordogne in a dog's age.

And I'm still not used to actually making it to the store with my bags or baskets in hand. Somehow I always manage to either forget them (and end up buying new ones, which explains the 30 or so Intermarché bags I've accumulated over the years), or get to them to the ca but forget to take them into the store with me.

About the SF debacle about dogging doo and plastic bags - around here it seems blue NYTimes plastic paper bags or other newspaper bags are ideal for this.

I wonder if SF has also banned plastic wrappers on newspaper deliveries?

In Seattle getting rid of plastic bags around newspapers would mean getting rid of newspapers. It's damp here.

They used to have a plastic tube with the newspaper's name on it attached to the mailboxes, but if they did that now here the neighborhood kids would set off bombs in it.

TORONTO (Reuters) - A small Canadian town claimed the honor on Monday of being the first municipality in North America to ban retailers from using plastic bags, in an effort to maintain its pristine environment.

The town's administrator said Leaf Rapids, a northern Manitoba mining town about 975 km (610 miles) northwest of Winnipeg, has ordered retailers to stop giving away or selling single-use plastic bags as of Monday. Stores that break the law face a C$1,000 ($865) fine.

Actually it was a story on our local CBC station - the National that was largely about Toronto's efforts to do the same that prompted by OP.

"Thank God we may soon hear the end of the rather bothersome question: "Paper or plastic?"

You are given an alternative choice : carry your own reusable bag.


"As European supermarkets have never used paper bags in my 38 years of traveling there, you more and more must bring your own"
Some of them have never used bags at all (Lidl, Aldi, etc..). People have adapted and never felt the need to make a fuss about it.


"I only regreat the disappearance of the plastic grocery bag because when in an unfamiliar city i always watch for the parade of folks carrying plastic bags full of groceries to track down the supermarket".

Considering the small amount of time it takes to ask for the direction to the nearest supermarket and the huge amount of time it takes for a plastic bag to stop being an environmental nuisance, it's worth the effort to just ask.

I visited the UK a few weeks back to pick up some supplies and was inundated with plastic bags by all the major supermarkets.

In France where I've had a house for over 13 years, I have never had plastic bags from the supermarkets here.

Paper bags are indeed rare in France, but when my parents retired to Béziers, France in 1972, the Casino supermarket across the street from them used paper bags. One of the first things they had to learn is that a bag was not called "un sac" in Béziers but "une poche"!

Paper bags are indeed rare in France, but when my parents retired to Béziers, France in 1972, the Casino supermarket across the street from them used paper bags. One of the first things they had to learn is that a bag was not called "un sac" in Béziers but "une poche"!

What's so special about it? It all depends on the area where you live. It can be une bourse, un sac en papier, un sac en plastique, un pochon. A mop is a une toile in the South, a wassingue in the North and a serpilière in between.
No big deal.
Fruit is usually purchased in paper bags at the market.

In 30 years of living in or traveling throughout Europe I can't remember getting a free plastic bag in a grocery, except maybe in France. We always paid about a dime equivalent for the store plastic bag. That is why people brought their own shopping bags or baskets to market.

OTOH, green grocers would wrap the veggies in flat paper, making a show of their folding skill.

Plastic bags were given out freely at hardware stores, clothing shops, etc. always with the store name on them.

This week San Francisco will ban plastic bags from grovery stores there - the de-platification of the world started in France and Europe it seems and is going west.

Watch out when visiting the supermarket section of Monoprix. Certain checkout lines are now labeled "for reusable bags only -- no bags distributed in this line". And since the warning is marked in French only, this may be a challenge for some of you.

There are a lot of theories and opinions in this thread, but, in the end, who's gonna pay for it? YOU the customer. As usual.

Supermarkets in Belgium gave out free (thin) plastic bags until recently. Our local GB has started charging about 3 cents for a small bag. Some stores, like Rob's, still give out free bags. But we've been bringing our own heavy duty bags for years anyway. If they get torn, the stores where you bought them will replace them for free.
Although all the grocery stores we shop at in the UK still hand out free bags, we use our own bags, except for raw meat...we still bag raw meat separately so that we don't contanimate the reusable bag. The meat bag then goes into the dog's "poop bag" container (although we usually use biodegradable poop bags bought at the pet store).
AFAIK, American stores like Costco require that you bring your own bags or boxes.
When we shop at farmers' markets in the US, we bring our own bags as well. No big deal.

There are a lot of theories and opinions in this thread, but, in the end, who's gonna pay for it? YOU the customer. As usual.

i've heard several 'experts' say all the money spent in Iraq - for the war and to give medical attention to the many more seriously wounded than even those killed and who will require care for years

plus future monies we will have to spend in Iraq -

all that money could have funded universe health care for several years!

yes taxpayers going to pay for it but tax monies can be better used than to find an ill-advise, winless war.

and those who think the taxpayer is going to pay for universal health care - that's a rather naive casual look

the folks who don't have health care and don't get preventative care do end up in the ER when they get ill and if seriously ill - the government in some form or other pays the chit.

and industries too are finding that they can become less competitive due to rising health care costs - a government plan relieving them of this could reap benefits in better business and less unemployment.

But the real reason for universal single-payer health care is that we are a compassionate society and everyone should get the best health care possible and this is a cost a compassionate society should bear - with efforts of course to keep health care costs (doctor fees, drug company profits, etc.) as low as possible

universla health care may indeed cost less to society than our current system.

PQ, I think you're on the wrong thread.

<There are a lot of theories and opinions in this thread, but, in the end, who's gonna pay for it? YOU the customer. As usual.>

If my local stores stop using plastic bags and customers have to bring their own reuseable bags how am i the customer going to pay for this?

Store's bag costs go down - maybe prices will be lowered? Or do you mean the customer will pay because of that of inconvience - having to bring their own bag - if that's the case then i'll gladly pay this prices for a better environment - such as hanging from tops of trees

(97-98% of plastic bags, though 100% recylable, end up either in landfills or blowing around in the environment)

U.S. uses 100 billion platic bags a year (right now on NPR these stats) - takes up a lot of oil.