When Larry and I first vowed to stop using plastic bags, we had good intentions but we weren't very good at remembering to take our reusables into stores with us. We would usually be in the checkout line before I slapped a palm to my forehead and yelled, "D'oh!"

Then one of us would run to the car to get the bags. I usually offered, because that way Larry would be the one that had to pay for the groceries while I was gone. Sometimes the bags wouldn't even be in the car, because we would have forgotten them when we left the house, too. In those cases, we would just go ahead and take the plastic bags the stores gave us and then do the walk of shame across the parking lot to the car.

Anyway, that was phase one of our green lives. We're in phase two now.

Now we really never, ever use plastic bags. We sometime still forget to bring our reusable ones into the store with us when we shop, but we no longer see that as a reason to participate in the plastic problem. Now, if we find ourselves in line at the checkout before we realize we're not holding our bags, we just set the items back in our cart and transfer them from cart to car. After all, we have bags at home we can load the stuff into so that we can easily carry it inside.

If we forget when we're at Publix, we just fish some bags out of the recycling bin in front of the store. We've found that lots of people must recycle their bags, because the bins are always full. Recycling is a good way to get the bags out of the house, and it's better than throwing them in the trash, or in the trees, or in the ocean or all the other places they often end up, but it's not optimal. 

Never using them is optimal if you're a consumer. That way, you don't have schlep them back to the store for recycling (which is a costly energy drain in any case) and you can feel proud instead of guilty when your eco-conscious friends send you an email with a link to this YouTube video, or the many others like it. 

Never using them is optimal if you're a seller, too. That way, you don't have to pay for them in the first place and you don't have to pay to recycle the ones that people bring back to you and stuff into the bin in front of your store.
 
Think your customers won't go for it? Sam's Club has gotten away with not supplying plastic bags for their customers and it hasn't hurt their business one bit. Customers know that they are getting a lower price because they are asked to buy in bulk and bring their own containers for purchases or reuse the empty boxes that the merchandise was packed in when it was delivered to the store. 

Has that dissuaded people from going to Sam's Club? No, they actually pay for the privilege of shopping there.

When we vowed to spend our money in establishments that were green friendly, we didn't realize how hard it would be to find grocery stores that were. If you know of one that refuses to supply plastic bags to consumers, please let us know so that we can channel our funds their way. 
 
And please, bag the impulse to carry on with business as usual. Stop using plastic and ask the stores and restaurants you buy from to do the same.