Re: shipping it around
"f anything, paper bags were the problem, because they taught us to think of shopping bags as disposable, when we could be using harder wearing, re-usable plastic bags from the start (as we do now)."
Unfortunately the re-usable bags have a much larger carbon footprint than the 'single use' bags (about 150 times greater) while the 'single use' bags usually get re-purposed, thusavoiding the need for buying other plastic bags for the secondary purpose.
When one looks at the illness and mortality data associated with re-usable bags, one can make a very good public health argument for banning them.