The average household buys 54 bags for life every year.

It will take role models to make it trendy to carry a thin strong folding bag.

It will take especially male role models to be seen using and wearing thin strong folding bags.

How I love strong independent men who are seen out and about doing right things!

19 years ago, I acquired a reusable fabric bag in a New Zealand supermarket. They were light years ahead of us in the supply and use of re-usable bags. I still have it among the others that I keep in the boot. I have several hemp bags which are strong and durable, plus a small insulated backpack for frozen items. I prefer to use a number of small bags because if I fill a large bag it's very difficult for me to lift it out of the trolley into the boot and from the boot into my kitchen.

Craftycat - we usually shop on foot as we live in the middle of the town but we recently had Tesco deliver a dozen bottles of wine and a few extras as well, in several bags. The delivery lady took all the plastic bags away with her to use again.

In answer to your query Craftycat, a lot of supermarkets no longer use single use bags with their online shop, or you can choose not to have bags - the shopping is all delivered in the plastic baskets and you unpack from them or occasionallyyou might have a helpful driver who will do it for you!
Morrisons, I think use bags still, but if used regularly, they take away the bags from your previous delivery the next time around!
I can't remember the last time I used a plastic carrier - I have several fold up bags in my handbag or I put them back in the boot for the next shopping trip. If you can't manage to do that, there is no help for you! Just whining "oh I never remember to take bags with me" is just pure laziness the bags for life should be got rid of and the tougher pvc bags (that only cost a couple of quid anyway) should be the only ones available.
When a couple of supermarkets in Australia decided to go the bags for life route, there was outrage , staff were even threatened or assaulted when they refused to sell the cheap carriers !

Craftycat those bags are great aren't they? I have bought about 20, 10 for the UK and 10 for our house in France. My local Waitrose, where I usually shop, is about to introduce a loose goods service where you bring your container and these bags will be ideal for loose pasta, nuts or rice.

In France they have been doing this for years and they supply paper bags, but again I will use the bags there.

The one downside, in France, at least, is that vegetables are weighed and priced in the veg section and you then stick a price label on your bag and these do not stick very well to the net. When I got to the till the label for mushrooms was stuck on a box of chocs and we had to search high and low for the potato price label and found it on the back of a pack of butter.

I am going to have to sew or staple a piece of plain flat plastic to each bag to take the label.

I have been reusing shopping bags for years before it became fashionable. I think the one-use supermarket bags really took off in the eighties and nineties as l seem to remember people having reusable bags, particularly those lovely wicker baskets before then and supermarkets charged for plastic bags. I remember old style supermarkets letting you use cardboard boxes to take your shopping home in.

Every time I have visited my family in Australia I have been horrified at the excessive use of plastic bags in supermarkets. They hung on a little Carousel gadget at the till, and the checkout person merrily twirled it around, filling, or only half filling bag after bag. Anyone taking their own bags was given rather dirty looks, as it delayed the checkout routine.

This year, hurrah, gone are the plastic bags and twirly things. Bags for life are on sale, and people are getting used to taking bags with them to the shops. Oz is, finally, getting an environmental conscience!

As for me,I have been using my own bags for years. I home-make them from old clothes, so they are a colourful bunch. I also have two fold-up nylon bags in my handbag for emergency use.

I have two roll up bags, both bought on trips to NZ and OZ before they became commonplace here and I’ve used them ever since. I keep bags for life in the car for larger shops.

I had a wicker basket years ago but it was very heavy with shopping in it so I used it for something else.

It strikes me that there is no need to manufacture new bags when there are so many fabrics that could be reused. For example, old synthetic curtains and ‘single use tents’ that are left at festivals and old sheets. All these could be repurposed.

Perhaps it’s time to ban all plastics that are not recyclable and go for reusing instead. It worries me that plastics end up in the food chain and are a blight on the environment. The UN figures suggest that global warming is happening far more quickly than was anticipated. Government(s) need to take urgent action even if it’s not popular.

I suspect my Mother in law contributes to the figure substantially. She never saw the point of taking your own bag, "why would you when they give you as many as you want free?" And now they are not free she has switched to the bags for life which she considers expendable because 15p isnt much to her.

As pointed out by someone else, when your Bag for Life wears out, the shop should replace it. My local Co Op has replaced one or two of mine when worn and holey, in fact recently they swapped two my husband had, but I was surprised as to me they had wear left in them.

I am still using the tough supermarket trolley bags that I bought when my son was working there. That was 16 years ago!!
I have even mended the seams on a couple of them. Not saying I haven't bought the odd extra bag when my shop was too large - possibly once of twice a year.

I haven't purchased plastic bags of any kind for years. I have some cloth bags, cotton, jute, hessian plus PVC and fold-up bags and take with me whichever ones I think I will need. My better half has been doing the grocery shopping for about a year now and he takes 4 'bags-for-life' with him - he usually only ends up using 2 or 3 of them and refuses to buy more than those bags full - his reckoning is he would sooner go shopping a few times a week just getting what we need for a few days - he used to hate coming with me and doing a massive weekly/fortnightly shop. I also use various bags for storage (as well as cardboard and plastic boxes, wicker hampers, wooden chests, plastic crates etc). When I used to do the grocery shop I would always take a bundle of bags and more than once ended up giving someone a bag because they didn't have any, and I'm aware many struggle to afford their groceries let along expensive carrier bags. We store plastic bags in bundles of 3 or 4, neatly folded with an elastic band round each bundle so when he goes shopping he only has to grab a bundle (he would never bother otherwise - hence how we acquired so many in the first place - he's got a lot better as time has gone on!) I keep meaning to check whether there is a local food bank that could use some extra bags, or give a bundle or two to people/families that are currently struggling.

Like many we find it hard to avoid some single-use plastics but recycle as much as we can and find alternative uses for others. My other half was a bit bemused when I used loads of the cardboard tubes from inside toilet rolls or kitchen rolls to store his vast collection of various leads and cables - I used a marker pen to write what each was for and it took him a while to appreciate my efforts but he now admits it has made it easier to find the ones he is looking for. If I was more creative or good at crafts I reckon a lot more could be recycled/upcycled/repurposed. Good to see so many on here lessen the landfill loads.

I have a Homepride Fred the Flour Grader cotton bag that was my mother's - and she died in 1982!
I have sewn a side seam back up and washed it on a good few occasions, as I use it for fruit and veg every week.
By my reckoning I've used it well over 1,500 times!!!
We have shopping bags in the cars, so they're always with us and I carry two or three small fold-up ones in my handbag and work bag, so I've always got one with me.
I wash the ones I use for clothes shopping fairly regularly, so I know they're clean enough to be used for clothing, towels etc.
My children also have bags to hand for food and other shopping - they have small children to deal with, but still manage to organise themselves on this front too.

@Lorelei - My husband helps in a Foodbank and they could certainly do with extra bags! They now ask people to bring their own bags, but on occasion people haven't got any with them, so yours would be useful I'm sure.

I think you are preaching to the converted MOnica
Everyone on here has been reusing cloth bags for years except my DH who I cannot seem to stop getting to the checkout without a bag grr

What do conscientious cotton bag shoppers put in rubbish bins at home, bearing in mind many so called biodegradable bags have been found not to be so?

What happened to those biodegradable plastic bags? The Co-op used to have them. Were they not as biodegradable as they said or were they environmentally unfriendly to manufacture? Just wondered.
I use a fabric fold up bag that I bought in Sainsbury's quite cheaply and I have been using it for months. It hardly takes up any room in my handbag and you just have to remember to fold it up and put it back when you've put your shopping away.

I've been using reusable bags since the days when shop assistants were very suspicious of you supplying your own bag. I remember one clothing shop saying I wasn't allowed to use my own bag. 'Okay, then, I won't buy your goods!' was the answer to that one.

Some of my bags date from the 90's or possibly older, and last night I mended the handle on a fold-up bag that my dd has.

Dh always has a bag for life in his jacket pocket. It's so old, the print has worn off!

The other thing I do is to keep one of those fold up crates in the back of the car. Then should I not have my reusable bag or it is not big enough I just load up the crate and then carry it into the house when I get home, empty and back in the car again.

Waitrose and the Co-op still give them out, but even though they will compost,it is still better not to use those either when there is a reusable alternative.

Grammaretto, I am not preaching to anyone but was just taken aback by this morning's headline on the news.

Given that many people, not just us, use and re-use bags, some households are using hundreds of these bags each year. Just using and chucking as they did with the thinner cheaper bags. As a result the amount of plastics used in till bags is going up not down.!

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I'm surprised cloth bags need so many uses to justify their existence. When I've made a quilt I use the leftovers to make bags. I give them away . The aim was for the quilts ( sized for wheelchair or pushchair)to be stored in them. Here are a few

25Avalon Interesting YouTube short video Biodegradable bags are not fully biodegradable, new study says.

No one has yet answered my query about what they use in rubbish bins in the house.

Greeneyedgirl we use biodegradable bin liners. You can buy them in all major supermarkets now and also in whole food shops etc.

Greeneyedgirl we have a metal bin with a plastic lining bucket in the kitchen. All our food waste goes in the compost, to the wormery or in the Green Cone for meat and fish, and we wash out food containers before recycling or putting them in the bin (the annoying ones which say "Check local recycling" but don't tell you what kind of plastic they are ). Therefore there is no smell and we tip the plastic liner's contents straight into the wheelie bin. The plastic bucket is washable of course, when necessary. I can't see any need for liners of any kind.

shysal, you must have excellent local recycling if they will take plastic bags! Most councils won't, but you can usually recycle them at larger supermarkets. Like you, I have picked up bags for life blowing around, and I keep a couple of them for picking up plastic bottles and cans when I'm out so that I can put them in the recycling bin (which we never manage to fill by ourselves) when I get home.

Like many other GNers, I have a selection of cotton and other bags. The cotton ones are very good for carrying knitting, I find.