I would be so far from shocked if we found out soon that plastic grocery bag / straw bans were a psi-op by big oil/plastic manufacturers to make people hate the idea of reducing single-use plastic. I couldn't have picked a more inconvenient and inconsequential place to start legislating if I had tried.
A ban on plastic soda bottles? Great! There's are existing non-plastic solutions, nobody would be negatively impacted, and we'd see that reducing our plastic use can be easy and not require major sacrifices. Instead we come up against it every time we buy a beverage or go to the grocery store.
I think you are on to something. It isn't unprecedented -- they did the same thing with 'recycling' -- using a political and media campaign to convince people that plastics weren't bad because they could be recycled, then getting legislation passed to require recycling by households. It is absolutely villainous.
The paper straws are pretty inferior but the grocery bag taxes just aren't that annoying. If you live in a place that charges for bags you quickly get used to just bringing bags with you and it's no big deal. Plus it significantly reduces the number of plastic bags blowing around in the wind. Since bags are so light they easily become airborne, sometimes posing a traffic safety hazard and often blowing into waterways.
My city outright banned single-use grocery bags. I was already in the habit of bringing re-usable bags, but every so often I'll have forgotten to grab bags or I'm stopping in on my way home from something else so I don't have them on me. Before the plastic bag ban, I'd just grab a "single-use" bag, and then use it as a trash bag for my kitchen or bathroom. Since the ban I regularly buy kitchen trash bags, I have about a dozen re-usable bags stuffed in the back of a closet, and half the stuff I buy at the grocery store still comes wrapped in a layer or two of excess plastic. For me, net loss. For the city? Probably a minor win in terms of plastic usage and street trash, and a significant loss in terms of people's willingness to ban other forms of single use plastic.
Before the plastic bag ban, I'd just grab a "single-use" bag, and then use it as a trash bag for my kitchen or bathroom. Since the ban I regularly buy kitchen trash bags
I wonder if those who come up with these ideas realise the irony of forcing people to buy bags which are truly going to be single-use instead of reusing what they would've already had.
How many people in your life re-use grocery bags? I'm fairly certain grocery bag bans are a net-win when viewed from the perspective of total plastic usage, because MOST people would have to be using them at least twice for the result to be anything other than a net-win from any perspective but mine. I only managed to use about as many as I was given because I got pretty good at remembering my re-usable bags...
The problem is not the burden of changing my behaviour, or the extra cost of buying exactly as much single-use plastic as I need in the form of a box of trash bags a couple times a year - the problem is why are we starting with this?? I'm dead certain that there are a ton of single-use plastics we could ban that would have close to ZERO impact on 99.9% of people's lives, because it would be handled entirely by industry doing a single re-tooling of their lines, but we're not doing those for some strange reason?
Everyone I know reuses them; not just for trash, but they're handy for whenever you need a bag (or even just a film of plastic) for whatever reason, because they take up almost no room.
Single use grocery bags are problematic in the sense they use almost no resources individually. Anything you're replacing them with uses far more plastic and/or energy to produce. A reusable bag tends to need reused dozens to a hundred times for the material needed to make it. Then add in you need to wash the reusable to avoid spreading food borne contamination and the ratio gets even worse.
My in-group used them extensively. For just about everything.
It doesn't really matter though; the ban on straws and taxes on shopping bags have resulted in a noticably lower amount of said products blowing around main roads. Totally worth it in my opinion.
Now, if we could just get biodegradable coffee and soda lids...
A ban on plastic soda bottles? Great! There's are existing non-plastic solutions, nobody would be negatively impacted, and we'd see that reducing our plastic use can be easy and not require major sacrifices. Instead we come up against it every time we buy a beverage or go to the grocery store.