Austin just put a plastic bag ban in place.
Seattle has a bag ban. Some laud the “positive environmental impact”. Others lament the high increase in shoplifting and the massive losses it’s causing.
I’ve spoken with numerous people in Austin, and many are going to stop shopping in Austin, instead shopping in surrounding communities. The City of Austin adds a 2% sales tax on top of the state’s sales tax. It might be interesting to see what sales tax revenue looks like in a few months.
Tourism revenue will be interesting to watch as well.
SXSW starts now, the first major event to happen post-ban. I’ll be curious what those visitors to the city think. Oh sure, they are likely a demographic that will applaud such a move… but then mutter or complain under their breath, lest they look “unhip” to everyone.
I understand the good intentions behind this latest brick in the road, but like most “bans”, they never really achieve the goals the originators expect but instead tend to have a lot of unintended and undesirable side-effects.
Stuff From Hsoi 
Let’s generously say that there’s only 50x as much material and production effort in a reusable bag. If that reusable bag doesn’t last long enough to do the job of 50 plastic bags then the reusable bag is actually a net negative both economically and environmentally.
I’ve used some large reusable bags from HEB for about 10 years now. At the time I figured that they’d be a waste. I have about a dozen of the bags and about five of them get used per weekly grocery run. So, each bag has about 4 years of work on it, which is about 200 trips to the grocery store, and they’re bigger than the small plastic bags, so each of my bags has probably saved me about 400 plastic bags (and counting). Shockingly, I’m actually happy with the bags. They’re easier to carry and hold more stuff.
However, I’ve also bought some absolute shit walmart “reusable” bags that fell apart on the second trip. Those were a total waste.
As far as the spreading disease argument goes, I only wash mine after exceptionally egregious messes. Food poisoning still seems rare at the house.
There is something to be said for reuse, for having quality products. I’d rather buy one good thing once that lasts me “a lifetime” than to always buy something cheap over and over… tho that’s what “keeps the economy moving”.
But this is the thing: quality. There isn’t much of any with the reusable bags, or it’s hit and miss, like you experienced.
Furthermore, there are greater challenges in terms of deployment that haven’t really been figured out. Some larger families or people that go to the store infrequently (i.e. larger shoppers)… how to help manage that? If they have to bring in 3 dozen bags, how do you actually manage that during the course of your shop? And now, any solutions are forced upon the retailer to bear the brunt and headache of, whether they wanted to or not.
But in the end, it’s a “feel good” “won’t someone do something” notion that doesn’t really solve the problems they want.
Now if instead maybe they took the approach you presented: showing the costs, the benefits, the gain… maybe if they actually presented the facts, the logic, the pro-arguments, and help educate people, help people make these decisions… maybe that might yield better consequences.
Check out my new blog: http://fighttheplasticbagban.wordpress.com/
On my blog I have a downloads menu item. If you click on that there are a number of papers that I have written that can be downloaded.
One paper titled “Negative Health and Environmental Impacts of Reusable Shopping Bags” deals with the health issues more extensively than you did in the article above. For example, in addition to bacteria, viruses and virus transmission with reusable shopping bags could make other sick. Also, people who have AIDS or a suppressed immune system may be more sensitive to bacteria in reusable bags then people who have normal immune systems. About 20% of the population fit in this category.
Also, when bag bans are implemented people always complain about all those plastic bags that end up in the landfill. But they have never stopped to calculate all the stuff going into a landfill after a plastic carryout bag ban compared to before. It would surprise you to know that 3.5 times the amount of material goes into the landfill post ban than pre ban. Those plastic carryout bags are sure looking good. see my article titled “Fact Sheet – Landfill Impacts” for the details and the calculations.
There is much more.