[wastedhours]

It's not even that though - with the 5p charge and them not being the default, I've stopped using them in instances where I wouldn't have needed them, but would have taken them anyway.

I'd always get a plastic bag with my £3 meal-deal from Tesco, but since it came in, I've just carried the stuff.

Haven't delved into the numbers yet, but am assuming they don't take into account recycled cotton, or if they're upcycled from other products. As for non-cotton alternatives - heavy duty plastic bags (i.e. Ikea ones or "bag for life"), rucksacks or handbags, re-used boxes, personal trolleys, etc... there are dozens of alternatives to single use plastics.

We still do get single use plastics for meat sales, and I reuse them as my bathroom bin-liners, so still have double duty without the dozens of other pointless plastic bags per trip

My counter anec-data: I got a canvas tote bag from the coffee festival years ago, its usage is easily in the 4 figures now, and still seems strong as an ox.

[oliwarner]

A billion times this.

If forget a long life bag, I'll either go without or reuse one of the cardboard produce crates that are freely available in many British supermarkets. We then re-reuse those crates at home for craft fun.

[TomK32]

The popular British past time of painting buses on old wooden crates...

[Ntrails]

> We still do get single use plastics for meat sales, and I reuse them as my bathroom bin-liners, so still have double duty without the dozens of other pointless plastic bags per trip

I may use fewer carrier bags - but I use a hell of a lot more black bin liners over a given time period - and that is a lot more plastic.

[wastedhours]

Were normal shop plastic bags really big enough for your bins? I'm using the same number of full-size bin liners as I was before the ban, and the same number of bags in my smaller bins (which are almost wholly the meat bags).

My own anec-data: every place I've ever lived I've needed a much larger bin than could be suitably lined by anything other than a picture-frame bag from The Range. Same with pretty much every other person's house I've been in as well. Not questioning your use case, but I honestly can't picture having a bin that small that a Sainsburys carrier would be at all useful anywhere other than a bathroom or for a tiny corner in a bedroom.

That being said, I stand by the point I was alluding to: extra bin liners that are actively paid for is surely less impactful than endless extra bags for shopping, or which only a handful will properly be recycled as bin bags?

(As a kid in a 4 person household, I remember our under stairs cupboard basically being full of carrier-bags, they weren't in a landfill, but they certainly weren't all being put to any acceptable use as our "small trash bag" requirement was orders of magnitude less than the number of bags coming into the house.)

[tjr225]

Maybe we should have smaller bins?

[oliwarner]

It seems odd that you'd go from using 10-20 litre shopping bags to full-size 70-100 litre black bags. There are intermediates. There are non-plastic, fully-biodegradable options too, all the way up to 240l garden waste bags.