Plastic bag bans will be rolled out nationwide by major retailers

Plastic bag bans will be rolled out nationwide by major retailers

Plastic bag bans are here.

For any states still able to get their hands on single-use shopping bags, the party comes to an end today in Woolworths, and on July 1 in Coles and IGA stores nationwide.

Also on July 1, Queensland and Western Australia will be joining the Northern Territory, the ACT, Tasmania and South Australia in a total statewide ban on the bags.

So with the writing on the wall, we can either pay for heavy-duty plastic bags, or start bringing our own.

The research says the majority of us will do the latter.

In Tasmania, nine out of 10 shoppers used reusable bags to do their shopping after the bans came into effect in 2011, up from six out of 10.

So if the future of grocery cartage is reusable, what are our options and how do they stack up?

Switching single-use for heavy-duty plastic bags?

If your aim is to reduce the amount of plastic you consume, replacing single-use plastic bags with heavy-duty, multi-use ones doesn't really add up.

You'll need to reuse a heavy-duty bag at least four times to recoup the extra energy needed to make it, according to a British life-cycle assessment of the comparative energy costs of different bag materials.

And then you've still got the issue of the plastic bag.