1. Shopping bags have become a stratified consumer market. From free disposables, through recycled fibre bags for a buck, to “premium” re-usable vinyl or plastic bags, people are still throwing them away irresponsibly, or at best, consuming too much plastic “luggage”.

2. Disposable plastic shopping bags make really good kitchen bin liners, and modern land fills require rubbish to be bagged to contain it more effectively. With many communities banning the bag, people are forced to buy purpose-made bin liner bags instead. A better campaign would have been to promote responsible re-use of shopping bags as bin liners, seedling protectors (stretched around wooden stakes to protect plants from wind and grazers) and any number of other uses.

Sadly, now plastic bags are even more proliferated, have become even more of a commercial product than they were (more entrenched) and are being disposed of just as much, whether bought (and using MORE resources) or free, and have become a greater environmental problem.

This happens quite frequently in green politics because people see a problem, but don’t research the market the problem exists in, before assuming banning is the solution.