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I think this is a great idea. I think most people don't use plastic bags because they still have the option of using them. If other grocery stores made the change I think there would be grumblings for about a week and then people would just get over it.

HunterAnglerGardenerCook: Lots of people I know re-use grocery plastic bags, except that in the grand scheme of things, I suspect we're the minority =p

It seems obvious and easy that we can do away with plastic bags altogether. Most people come home and then just throw the bags away. If you're not going to even bother to re-use them for, say, trashcan liners, then try to come up with a solution. I bought 5 reusable mesh bags from Publix for $0.99 apiece and they have turned out to be a blessing. Each bag holds the equivalent of 4 plastic bags, and the handy shoulder straps make carrying everything in a breeze. I wish I had switched sooner.

how will I pick up my dog poo?!

I have no idea where you people live, but I can't get a PAPER bag to save my life. I HATE plastic bags. The only thing I want in plastic is meat and bread. Otherwise, I want paper and I can't get them. It's plastic, plastic, plastic.

Bastards.

$30! We are not made out of money and with the rising price of food costs? Absolutely ridiculous!

I always thought that WF was overpriced and now I'm sure of it. I can't help but wonder just how much of that $30 actually ends up feeding hungry children.

It's wonderful times we live in when people can be so serious about something so silly!

So I'm reading this thread ironically while watching National Geographic's Strange Days special on our waterways (that everyone who eats should watch) and what should come up but plastic. Coincidence? No, only about 1% of the 16 billion plastic bags that are made each year are recycled. Even the ones that "breakdown" only turn into smaller bits of plastic that contaminate the dirt and water and become "litterally" no-nutrition filler food for birds and animals while fish and other marine life think it's plankton and all we care about is what we are going to put our pet poop in?

As Ed Norton who hosts the shows says:

“People say, ‘What’s the one thing they could do to help?’ I say you gotta do more than one thing,” he said. But, he continued, “One thing for sure is the bags. Plastic bags are turning out to be one of the worst stupidest things that we’re doing to the environment. Those little bodega-deli plastic bags we use for 30 seconds and then throw away.”

He wants them banned, a move many countries have already taken. “When China is ahead of us in banning these things, when other countries around the world are banning these things, we need to get in line with that and catch up,” he said. “That is a simple, small thing that everybody can do—forget about those silly plastic bags.

There's a giant cesspool of plastic in the Pacific twice the size of the United States about 500 west of California. There's estimated to be 46,000 pieces of plastic trash in each square mile of ocean. In some places there is six pounds of plastic for every pound of fish. Americans use 380 BILLION plastic bags each year and some cities the cost is 17 cents disposing of each one.

Really, take a look at some pictures and see if you feel the same about convenience afterwards.

Whole Foods sells non-woven fabric or recycled plastic reusable bags for $1.00, and they often have promotions where they give them away w/purchase. The canvas-and-burlap Feed 100 bag is a fundraiser for charity. That really should have been explained in this entry, link or no. The way it reads suggests Whole Foods is going to make customers buy $30 canvas bags.

For the record, I've been using the non-woven bags for three years now, and they're still in great shape.

Does anyone have any good info on the biodegradable plastic bags? I got all excited when I first heard about them (clearly I need to get out more), but then I read that they're no good unless you compost (not really possible in Brooklyn) and that the energy used to grow the corn that goes into making them does much worse damage than regular plastic bags. @Chisai is right - in the city we have to use plastic bags for trash, so all of mine get reused. But I'd be happy to use canvas for grocery shopping and then buy biodegradable plastic bags, if they're any good for the environment. Help!

CookiePie, on corn plastics (also called PLA) it's not as good as the propaganda. Sure, they are compostable but it requires a special process that no backyard will approximate and few towns or cities have in place. So, it's a contaminate to composting but also one to plastics as it can't be recycled and indeed ruins recycling efforts of plastic.

According to a biodegradability standard that Mojo helped develop, PLA is said to decompose into carbon dioxide and water in a “controlled composting environment” in fewer than 90 days. What’s a controlled composting environment? Not your backyard bin, pit or tumbling barrel. It’s a large facility where compost—essentially, plant scraps being digested by microbes into fertilizer—reaches 140 degrees for ten consecutive days. So, yes, as PLA advocates say, corn plastic is “biodegradable.” But in reality very few consumers have access to the sort of composting facilities that can make that happen. NatureWorks has identified 113 such facilities nationwide—some handle industrial food-processing waste or yard trimmings, others are college or prison operations—but only about a quarter of them accept residential foodscraps collected by municipalities.

Then there's the issue that more and more people are allergic to corn (which some tie to the genetically engineered strains that have appeared just in the last decade or so) and these plastics are literally deadly to them (which can be ironically unfortunate if they go to the hospital for ingesting food that wasn't supposed to contain it and end up worse because of all the corn derivitive contaminated equipment and medicines there.

The GE corn also requires intensive chemical inputs just to grow which are leaching into our groundwaters and oceans creating other issues such as dead zones which are destroying marine life (including seafood).