Plastic shopping bags have a few advantages, but also a lot of disadvantages.
One of the problems is that these are made from not renewable petrochemicals.
If disposed improperly endanger many forms of wildlife, they don't biodegrade in a sanitary landfill, and the high volume to weight ratio of plastic means that the collection and transport of this waste is difficult and expensive.
Because of this many states have banned the use of free shopping bags in supermarkets.
Plastic bags are made of low density polyethylene, which is really hard and expensive to recycle: actually, having recycled one such bag costs much more than making a new one, therefore no one really bothers to recycle.
Even if recycling in not an option for a lot of us, there are ways to reuse them.
This is not a new thing, when bags were not given away for free, people would save their plastic bags instead of throwing them into trash.
Reusing anything more than once can save you money, but also it means that you are friendlier to the environment.
There are a few ways to use again the bags: you can use them for smaller trash cans.
For example, bathroom, desktop or laundry room trash cans are ideal to line them with a plastic bag.
They can be cut or torn to fit the size of the liter pan, and work just as well as the purposely designed pet liners.
You can also use a shopping bag as mini trash bags: you can put there anything you want to throw away when cleaning the drawers or cabinets, but not enough to fill a trash bag.
You can also use plastic bags to organize your stuff: instead of plastic bins, you can fill bags with your junk from the shelves or drawers.
You can put sewing and crafts supplies, or children's snacks in them.
You can also organize your stuff already in boxes and bins.
You can also use shopping bags for wet bags, to put your wet bath suit in them.
This is very practical if you swim a lot, and you must transport your wet clothes home.
And you can also save the money you'd spend on the wet bag.