Well, other places in the world deal with it slightly differently as well.
I currently live in St. Petersburg, Russia, and very few stores hand out plastic bags for free; most charge a small fee (5 ruble is the most I've seen) per bag. The net effect is that most people do end up getting a small collection of durable bags that get used for everything for as long as the bag lasts. (St. Petersburg has rather unpredictable precipitation, so it's not unusual to use plastic bags to protect whatever you're carrying with you either). Ultimately, the bags stay in use as long as they are fit for use.
Similarly, when I was still living in in the US in Washington State, the city I was in did a bring your own bag initiative, which has been taken further this year, apparently. [1] My experience at the time was that you'd get a small fee added to your grocery bill to account for the number of bags you used, but if you elected to bring your own bag, this was instead deducted. With the WA initiative, it was much more environmentally minded.
Ultimately both initiatives had the same effect - new bags were acquired by customers less frequently and reusable bags were more frequently used without much complaint. Once in a blue moon I see (saw) small breakdowns over charging for the bags, but most of the time people don't seem to care. WA cities weaned themselves onto the BYOB initiative. In St. Petersburg, I'm under the impression it was more of a "why wouldn't we charge for it?" sort of thing from the stores. Regardless of what direction cities decide to adopt, people will adjust pretty quickly and easily it seems - $.05 isn't much in USD, but 5 RUB here and there can add up to a transit pass pretty quickly in Russia right now. (30 RUB for surface transit, 35 for subway). Excess use of plastic bags is a habit of laziness.
I currently live in St. Petersburg, Russia, and very few stores hand out plastic bags for free; most charge a small fee (5 ruble is the most I've seen) per bag. The net effect is that most people do end up getting a small collection of durable bags that get used for everything for as long as the bag lasts. (St. Petersburg has rather unpredictable precipitation, so it's not unusual to use plastic bags to protect whatever you're carrying with you either). Ultimately, the bags stay in use as long as they are fit for use.
Similarly, when I was still living in in the US in Washington State, the city I was in did a bring your own bag initiative, which has been taken further this year, apparently. [1] My experience at the time was that you'd get a small fee added to your grocery bill to account for the number of bags you used, but if you elected to bring your own bag, this was instead deducted. With the WA initiative, it was much more environmentally minded.
Ultimately both initiatives had the same effect - new bags were acquired by customers less frequently and reusable bags were more frequently used without much complaint. Once in a blue moon I see (saw) small breakdowns over charging for the bags, but most of the time people don't seem to care. WA cities weaned themselves onto the BYOB initiative. In St. Petersburg, I'm under the impression it was more of a "why wouldn't we charge for it?" sort of thing from the stores. Regardless of what direction cities decide to adopt, people will adjust pretty quickly and easily it seems - $.05 isn't much in USD, but 5 RUB here and there can add up to a transit pass pretty quickly in Russia right now. (30 RUB for surface transit, 35 for subway). Excess use of plastic bags is a habit of laziness.
[1] https://www.cityoftacoma.org/government/city_departments/env...