Ok do away with them it is clear far too many of us will not dispose of them properly.
I reuse them then place them under the lawn mower with cow manure and put the cut remains in my productive mulch, too hard for some.
But please not the cotton feel good reuse ables!
Anyone seen the very dirty ones? the ones dragged out of a filthy car sat one the bench your grocery's are to sit on?
What if a family has an outbreak of say hep c?
Paper bags ,just what we once had and America never gave up one within the other for wet items, ok .
But we should question why health restrictions controlling a sandwich shop do not apply at check outs cotton is a money maker but unsafe.

Don't really agree that they should be banned outright, just that supermarkets etc. should not be able to give them out for free, and perhaps the ones they do supply must be biodegradable.
A 50c surcharge on each plastic bag, considering the reusable ones are typically less than a dollar these days, should be enough to push most customers to opt for the latter option.

Of course plastic bags are just one symptom of a larger problem of excessive non-reusable/non-recyclable packaging. It seems we have no choice these days but to buy everything wrapped in layers of plastic and foil. Why can't I take my empty bottle of dishwashing powder and have it re-filled? Or opt to have my meat from butcher wrapped only in paper, without the unnecessary plastic?

There are bio-degradable plastic bags used by some merchants that disintegrate in the environment. They turn brittle and turn to dust.
Except they are more expensive. If mass produced the price should go down.

We've received such bags from clothing-shops and after 2 years found them to be in the process of disintegration.

The Big Supermarkets however buy what is the cheaper option to the point where plastic bags today are so thin - they can't carry the weight of the groceries forcing the checkout clerks to use more bags to distribute the weight.

Perhaps the law should be that Supermarkets use only bio-degradable bags? But of course they are going to charge for them, and not everyone will agree to pay for them. People will stop buying in bulk, and will resort to only buying what they can carry on a daily basis,
using local small markets instead of the big Supermarkets at a financial loss to the Supermarkets. For example large hardware outlets
have stopped providing plastic bags and people buy less, only what they can carry in their hands, or in the small cardboard packaging boxes if available.

It will take Government action to pass legislation to achieve any progress.

The problem with supermarkets charging for plastic bags is that they already do. The cost of the bags is incorporated into the price of groceries. If they start charging at the checkout for bags, those who buy them will pay twice and those who don't buy them will keep paying for them anyway, because grocery prices won't go down just because bags are paid for at the checkout.

I'd like to see the end of plastic bags and a lot of other unnecessary packaging, but I really resent that the Coles and Woolworths monopolies on everything will get an increased profit out of it.

If the price of bags was 50c each as a disincentive it would be even worse. The bags aren't worth even 1c each

They might not be worth 1c each, but the cost of the long-term damage they do might well be in the vicinity of 50c each.

What a pile of bl@@dy rubbish.

Each of my 5 gram plastic bags , when loaded at the supermarket, hold at least 300 grams of useless packaging, which will end up in land fill, & take up much more room. If they realy want to do something useful, they should try to reduce this true excess.

This is just another band wagon for attention seeking busy bodies, of a greenish colour.

I have found that any bags around here, that have spent any time in the sun, disintegrate when touched, just like any other plastic, all of which are degraded by sun light.

The story that plastic is not degradable is just rubbish. Dozens of companies have spent millions trying to reduce the degradability of plastic in sunlight.