More dogma challenging
So there's a bunch of groups lobbying and legislating to ban shopping bags in the ACT to save us from global warming. From experience, full life-cycle cost can be fiendishly difficult to quantify. I look from time to time and the most recent calls prompted me to find this study:
http://www.rmit.edu.au/redirect?URL=http%3A%2F%2Fmams.rmit.edu.au%2Fr97dgq3iero9.pdf
Short version: Your re-usable shopping bag needs to last 100-ish trips to be more energy efficient than using disposable bags. That's about 2 years at one shopping trip a week. In our experience they last about 6 months.
So support packaging laws, but not blindly, and not to implement solutions that may make the situation worse.
BTW, we use long lasting calico bags that probably cost way more energy than the eco-bags.
http://www.rmit.edu.au/redirect?URL=http%3A%2F%2Fmams.rmit.edu.au%2Fr97dgq3iero9.pdf
Short version: Your re-usable shopping bag needs to last 100-ish trips to be more energy efficient than using disposable bags. That's about 2 years at one shopping trip a week. In our experience they last about 6 months.
So support packaging laws, but not blindly, and not to implement solutions that may make the situation worse.
BTW, we use long lasting calico bags that probably cost way more energy than the eco-bags.