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.

Huh? If "companies have spent millions trying to reduce the degradability of plastic in sunlight", then surely one would expect that most plastic bags today are not degradable? Of course they will degrade eventually, but if they last decades before doing so, they can cause considerable damage, both to the health and livelihood of other species, and aesthetically. According to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodegradation#Indicative_lengths_of_degradation plastic bags take 10-20 years to degrade, vs 2-5 months for paper bags.

I agree however that plastic bags are not even necessarily the worst form of unnecessary and harmful packaging.

(Who knew that nappies/diapers took up to 800 years to degrade?!)

Well, now ,is this an example of a law from our new government? Ban plastic bags- I thought whaling and drought and a myriad of other things would have been priority but no! we ban plastic bags.
So do we go back to cutting down more trees to make brown paper bags? Or wooden crates instead of plastic?
Ah! This is the 'fresh' government.

Use reusable cloth or polymer bags - indeed, I avoid supermarket plastic bags because a) they don't hold much and b) they cut into your fingers and break. We have about 6 Coles "green bags" (in various colours) that are nearing on 3 years' old now and just as sturdy and much easier to carry. 6 is more than enough for a week's shopping, whereas with disposable plastic you might need up to 10. That's 10*52*3 = 1560 plastic bags vs 6 green bags - and I expect the green bags have at least another 3 years in them. It astonishes me that people still use disposable plastic bags.

Paper bags from plantation timber (and/or recycled paper) isn't a big problem except that they technically use more energy to manufacture than plastic bags. But if they're being manufactured using a clean energy source, paper bags are preferable to plastic.

It is worth noting if we all took card board boxes home as carriers it would be far worse.
Now every one or near it gets recycled out the back of super markets.
Few posters have addressed the health issues of cotton bags.
Country towns see truly filthy ones retrieved from the car, sometimes.
One check our girl told of her right not to fill those ones, but spoke of her aggressive neighbors coming into the shop with truly filthy ones.
Goats travel in that station wagon.
She fills them out of fear.
Why not brown paper bags? recycled paper bearing what ever adds you can sell, say let them steal 20 cents of us for every one.
Sometimes that would be 2 or even 3 dollars for some.
Plastic does rot, my fruit trees save water and thrive on mulch made party from them, paper bags can go in with that , chook manure powers the lot up ,sorry but thats your lot for today.

I am worried more about the damage that is done to our wildlife by the littering of plastic bags than about the environmental damage they cause, which I think is only minor compared to other environmental threats.
The government should be concentrating on bigger environmental issues rather than on changing light bulbs and bags.

People should be educated about responsibility of using and disposing of bags.
We need to focus on controlling of littering rather than banning plastic bags.
It is the littering that does most of the damage; not the bags themselves are the biggest problem.

Why can't all plastic bags be made of degradable materials anyway? We all need bin liners and most of the plastic bags we use are being recycled. I read somewhere that we've cut our use of plastic bags by about half already.

My local shopping mall exchanges 20 plastic bags for a cotton shopping bag, which I thought is a great initiative.

We need to let our supermarkets know that we do not want unnecessary packing materials around our produce.
Shopping at greengrocers and butchers rather than supermarkets will not only support small, local shops but will also reduce the use of unnecessary packaging materials.

Celivia sorry but those light bulbs add up to a very great deal of good.
It will be in this way, small things we all do, that we bring about change.
Truth is we have cut our use of plastic bags, some of us.
Clean up Australia and such has seen less litter thrown away, by some of us.
Out at sea, any sea any part of it, you will find plastic bags, thrown away some by people who call themselves conservationists.
Plastic is cheaper so we are stuck with it, that is sad but true.
Lets be innovative.
Charge ten cents deposit on every plastic bag, every bottle or container made of tin plastic any non biodegradable container.
At some special place near our food outlets have the recycling center.
We will see less litter.
But do not ask that we use cotton because it looks like we care more even if it is wrong.

Cevilia, I'm puzzled... surely damage that is done to our wildlife is very much a form of environmental damage?

Indeed, really the only way in which "damage" is a meaningful concept is the degree to which it affects life. If something doesn't contain life, I'm not sure even sure it qualifies as an "environment". I doubt very many greenies would get upset about, e.g., digging up asteroids to mine them for minerals, unless doing so presented a risk to life on Earth.

Belly,
I do agree that every little bit we can do for the environment counts. But while fluorescent globes seem a good thing because they are more energy efficient, we should be concerned about correct disposal of these globes. Environmental groups say that most of them are being dumped in landfills and because they contain mercury, which is very toxic, this will become a health and environmental concern. They should be properly disposed of through chemical clean-ups. This, generally, is not happening.

Wizofaus,
I can see why you’re puzzled- perhaps I haven’t explained properly. What I’m trying to say is that the use of plastic bags would not be such a 'direct' threat to our wildlife (e.g. strangling or choking them instantly) if people would dispose of or recycle the bags in a proper way rather than litter them all over the country.
There are always the more indirect threats, too, such as the wastes produced in the manufacturing of bags and how they break down. And this affects the environment in a more indirect way.

Littering is a big problem, which should be addressed and controlled. I don't have the answer to the methods we can use to reduce littering- education through campaigns, perhaps?
When driving I regularly notice careless, ignorant people (TOSSERS!) throwing their rubbish out of their car window. I’m not sure if education will change the behaviour of tossers.

Continued...

I’d have thought that the price of plastic bags is already calculated into the price of our groceries. We might not be charged for them separately, but consumers pay for them in other ways, don’t they? Correct me if I’m wrong. Perhaps it would be better to be charged for them as separate items.
I remember as a child that my mother had to pay for all bags including bread bags at the bakery. We would reuse the same bag to be refilled at the bakery with sliced bread until it had holes in it.
Would the manufacturing of bags made of biodegradable materials be more costly than the manufacturing of plastic bags? I have no idea.
I am in two minds about biodegradable bags as I am about the light globes. Biodegradable bags are only the answer if they don’t end up in landfill where they will release methane, a greenhouse gas.

So I don’t know what kind of bag out of the two would be more environmentally friendly; it all depends how responsible people are.

ATM, I hear both sides of the issue and find it increasingly hard to make up my mind. It’s a complex issue.
A conventional plastic bag may be less damaging to the environment if it’s been recycled after use than a biodegradable bag that ends up in landfill where it will release methane.
But… a biodegradable bag that is re-used properly (e.g. used in compost) may be less damaging to the environment than a plastic bag that is littered.
But what if they’re both disposed of in the most responsible way? I simply don’t know.
See what I mean? I find it hard to say whether one or the other will be ‘better’ because it is quite a complex issue.

I feel that the best solution for now would be to use re-useable bags such as the fabric green bags and to limit the use of plastic as well as biodegradable bags.

Well you're never going to stop people littering. There's just way too many people using way too many bags to prevent it. Preventing them from being manufactured in the first place is at least feasible - and there's not likely to be a huge black market for (non-degradable) plastic bags cropping up, given the abundance of alternatives, and the fact that customers don't actually want to buy plastic bags anyway (which makes plastic bags completely different from, say, alcohol, tobacco or marijuana). Once you've got into the habit of reusing your bags, there really no loss of convenience. On the occasion that you inevitably forget or find yourself at a store without a bag, having to pay 50c for a biodegradable bag would hardly cause any great pain.

Eventually all packaging is going to need to be reusable, recyclable or biodegradable. We have the technology, the immediate economic cost is barely any more, and the long term cost is surely far far less. If anything's a no-brainer for regulation, that is.

I still am having trouble getting a point across, once our beer and soft drink bottles mostly got recycled.
Taken back to be cleaned and then refilled, the cash deposit made it something most people wanted to do, if not the purchaser.
Cotton is re used over and again, sometimes without being washed.
I believe at times dangerous things can take place importing dirt into food shops.
Once we paid to use brown paper bags ,bigger ones to carry in, America still does.
Paper degrades plastic may never.
Why not pay a deposit for containers?
If only 40 or 50% is reused it would make big inroads into unwanted landfill items I have faith we could do about 90% in time.

In South Africa there was so much litter that every thorntree along the side of the road sprouted colorful plastic bag "fruit". Walking through a village one day a friend exclaimed rhetorically "Hell, where do all these bloody plastic bags come from?" My younger son informed her gravely that they grew on trees at the side of the road.

Belly - I think people are so confused about environmental concerns that they would not happily accept paper bags either because of deforestation issues.

However in countries I've lived in, including England and now China, where plastic bags are no longer used in shops, you just learn to wear a backpack when going downtown or have those shopping bags which fold up into tiny packets which slip into the pocket (even in tight jeans!) or handbag.I've never left home without one for years. Its never seemed a problem

All plastic is made from the burning or fractionation of oil, or its products.

When you buy plastic, you are supporting the consumption of oil. It is irrelevant whether it is in the form of a shopping bag or a 200L plastic drum.

Plastic over time will break down (NOT biodegrade - absolute codswallop - this is a political term) into its multiferous parts. This includes poly aromatic hydrocarbons, stabilisers, and other nefarious chemicals which play havoc on the reproductive organs of invertebrates and vertebrates. Oh, and have a starring appearance in the skyrocketing reproductive cancer rates in humans.

Please, just don't buy plastic. Canvas, jute, brown paper and hemp bags were good enough for our parents when they shopped at Coles. Well do I remember the paper bag lined rubbish bin in the kitchen.

What makes us so special?

Spritegal: you're absolutely right.Hemp is the top natural material to use for 101 uses,clothes,cloth and even medicine can be made from it. The problem? It allows small farmers to make a good quid, big corporations don't like that, especially the poison using big cotton farmers which leach that stuff into our water-aquifers.Safeway and Coles look after their investors and don't give a damn about who eats their stuff which is btw the worst of "foods" one could eat anyhow.Check it out! Smaller shops can select who they buy it from and can find the best quality as keeping their customers is really important to them.Plastics do have a hormone precurser. I do use the bags to store kitchen scraps until full then tip contents into my wormfarm and save the plastics into one large bag, when full straight into recycle bin.As far as oilproducts is concerned has anyone seen "the disclosure project" yet? Just google it,an eye-opener.

Around here a different use is found for hemp.
However brown paper bags made of recycled paper should make most happy ,hemp or cotton my concerns are the same.
How clean are those bags after reuse?

Not to be too left field, but for those that haven't seen the message of Tim Minchin should watch the Canvas Bags clip on You Tube - though veiled in comedy a very good reminder.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNs1ksphqf0

This clip also includes the very important message about peace in the Middle East. ;-)

I think u are trying to follow in the footsteps of europe where they make u pay for shopping bags. They dont care if they are made of plastic, just as long as they can get their 50eurocents.

What do u want Australia to copy next ?

Paying 2euros to use public toilets ?
Fees for borrowing books at public Libraries ?

High Back account keeping fees ?

Are you fair dinkum, an Aussie term meaning do you truly think like that?
Currently we are told the federal government is to abandon, or outlaw plastic shopping bags.
I thought the thread was about what do we do next? and is it wise to use cotton bags that may be dirty over and over again.
We pay for those cotton bags now.
We pay less for plastic bags because while the costs to the environment of poorly discarded ones is high the cost is low.
So if we get to use single use recycled brown paper bags, we will pay for them, nothing new this country once used them and paid for them.
Paper rots away, and a new use for recycled paper would be good, do many know much of the paper we put in our recycle bin is buried?
It has been at times, the cost of recycling sees some just buried or even burnt.
I will pay my 50 cents so I do not have to see dirty bags on the bench with my shopping.
And if I do not see plastic bags floating in our rivers it will be worth it.

Hi Belly,
Being witness to the abundance of plastic bags in South Africa and them only recently bringing in a charge for a plastic bag on any given shopping day, has also brought with it a form of mixed feelings.

Now that they have to pay for a plastic bag, it has created work for the needy over there, collection points where various arts and craft people use the bags for weaving, bin liners, making carrier bags from the bags themselves etc, and they make a formidable profit from this and yes, on the other side, these bags play havoc with the environment, to such an extent that animals die from ingesting the bags or simply get caught-up in them, unable to free themselves.

I go with the Americans on this, by issuing paper bags, re-cycled bio-degradable and not seen as a potential threat to infants or animals alike.

Surely, at the time when plastic bags first came into being, this was not thought about and before we knew it, we were suffocating in the stuff!

Here in the UK, we still use plastic bags and still fail to understand as to WHY in a first world country?

Umm
This is a hard one. Trees make paper. However I agree Animals and the world around us must come first.
Still I can think of one good use for a plasic bag . Hehe.

SPANKY we think alike here once we used brown paper bags, it was some time ago but it worked.
If you put wet items in the bags you use two.
We have to get away from plastic.
Recycled paper can be an answer in a post above I highlighted some of the paper we send for re use is buried in the tip not seen as of enough value.
recycled paper costs no trees but if we use it often enough may save them, we must grow two trees for every one we cut down in any case for many years to undo the damage.