When I see the number of plastic bags in our environment, from Doggie Doo bags to trendy, boutique bags it seems astonishing that they’ve only come into common usage during my lifetime.
When I was a child dogs often roamed but I can’t ever remembering stepping in their disgusting poo nor can I remember seeing anyone ever picking up after their dog.
Garbage bags weren’t needed, we had an incinerator to burn our rubbish.
Our meat came from the Butchers wrapped in white paper, dog food and cat food came from our table scraps and bones from the Butcher so no plastic wrapped meat there either. The fruit and vegetables that we didn’t grow came from the market in brown paper bags.
I used to hate going to the shop for Mum, she always gave me a string bag to carry the things home. The problem with string bags is that when you’re a kid everything in it bangs against your leg and cereal boxes with corners really hurt. Not only that but even all those years ago we knew the feeling, if not the term, “uncool” and string bags were definitely not the things you wanted to be seen carrying.
Now that we’ve become used to buying just about everything wrapped in some kind of plastic our environment is becoming polluted with it. In South Australia supermarkets aren’t allowed to give away plastic bags, shoppers need to bring their own or buy a bag, usually one intended for multiple usage. You won’t be surprised to know that not one of my shopping bags is made of string!
Musings of a Retiring Person 
With so many more people in the world, and so much more plastic being used per person, it is no wonder that plastic is finding its way into the oceans, with dangerous consequences. We have a large and ambitious plastic recycling program here in Canada, which I applaud. However, I suspect it only rounds up a fraction of the plastic that is being circulated. It would be ironic if the string bags you are using were made of plastic!
I don’t use string bags, some of my shopping bags are natural fibre but the ones currently promoted as multiple use bags are synthetic and much stronger than the thin plastic ones so I suspect that in a few years they’ll be a big problem. I’ve just recently discovered that a big source of “microplastic pollution” in the ocean is coming via washing machines!