We should. But even small baby step measures with no downsides like plastic bag bans are wildly contentious.
I live in a county that's enacted one, and it's been unambiguously an improvement for the area on top of the core goal of "reduce plastic waste". But visiters look at me like I live in East Germany when I mention that.
I don't say this to discredit the idea, but it's politically treacherous, and not a lot of people are willing to stick their necks out for the right thing.
After a certain point we have to force consumer's hands and tell them to get the fuck over it.
The level of inconvenience added to my life by not using plastic bags is so unbelievably small it's not even worth the oxygen I would need to spend to express my discomfort. It's really, really not a big deal.
The fact that some people are extraordinarily high-stress and enjoy making problems out of nothing should not be our concern. Let's not optimize for those people, they'll never be happy anyway.
Here they tax the bags. I don't use them so much, only if I really need them.
The problem is, sometimes you do need them because you had to change plans and didn't bring any bags. I don't own a car or anything where I can leave them. Often leave the house without even a backpack.
And paper bags don't work when it rains or when you need to bring heavy stuff like drinks.
The rain complaint is fair, but I frequent several grocery stores that only use paper bags, and when I buy heavy stuff, they just double the bags. Never have had a problem with that.
Hmm I often buy 3 or 4 2L bottles and in my experience that is wayy too heavy for paper bags.
And my water, I buy it in 6-packs of 2L, they come plastic-wrapped with a handle so you can carry them more easily. The tapwater in my city is not drinkable.
They can't really help it. It's just in a subtropical climate and ancient piping they need to put quite a lot of chlorine in it to avoid bacterial buildup like legionella which can kill people.
