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.