If we're going to play that game, I'm a materials chemist. Trust me, you can expect more surprises from concretes and steels - amazingly clever mixtures - over fifty years than you can from a simple polyethylene film over a hundred.

So, it's exactly as convenient as actually owning a roll of bags. What would the problem be if you suddenly had to switch over to ready-made bags? Do you actually use up all the bags you bring in?

That's because electric cars inherently cost a small fortune. (And will do until technology improves.) The barrier to entry is large enough that you'd need a much larger economic incentive before people were willing to switch.

My point is that whatever passing-on-the-cost objection applies (or does not apply) to a bag surcharge also applies (or not) to his solution.

If I'm remembering rightly, they even had special trolleys that the crates fitted right into. Everything went straight into the crate as you shopped-and-scanned. You bought the crate outright, so it was yours, you just took it out to the car with the shopping in there and walked it right into the house. I still see them now and then when someone on my street is moving.

Of course the self-scanning thing is kind of the trick here.

The cost is always attached to the bag, in my experience. Unless there are some nations taxing supermarkets per bag used or something I don't know about.

Mine's some sort of synthetic, I just machine wash it. I don't know why you would use canvas because like you say it's almost unwashable.

1) You don't have to wash them after ever visit, unless you're buying, like, unwrapped raw chicken in which case you've got bigger problems
2) You don't have to remember to bring them to the store so long as you have the presence of mind to know that you're going to the store, or to keep one in a handy place for unexpected runs.

I don't see how it saves time and bother. You go to the store once, and you have a roll of bags for about 3 months. Versus having to go shopping to be able to throw out your garbage.

1) My bin liners do come with handles. Really convenient for tying them off. If I was stuck and for some reason I needed a plastic bag for groceries I would certainly take one. (I use them for carrying the occasional inconveniently-shaped object anyway.)

2) You don't have to use "large trash cans holding large amounts of trash", I have bins of sizes from about 1 metre tall (kitchen nonrecyclables) to about 30cm (bathroom trash) and I can buy bin liners that neatly fit all of them.

3) Why on Earth do you have to leave your cloth bags at the front desk? We're just allowed to carry us around with us as we shop.

4) If you're coating your bags with things that cause disease you are doing something horribly wrong with your shopping. I have to machine wash a bag now and then if an item breaks but that's a quarterly chore at most, and just involves throwing it in when I wash my kitchen towels and cloths.

The decay rate of polyethylene is on sturdier ground than the decay rate of modern concretes and steels, so I don't think there's much cause for pathological scepticism. Unless you're unduly concerned that your roof is about to fall in on your head.

Wouldn't the greater cost of the biodegradable bags also be passed onto the consumers in the form of higher prices? Anyway, the idea isn't that people would "take good care" of sacks they would otherwise throw out; the idea is that people would stop taking them in the first place.

Alternatives are already widely deployed in Europe. By shifting the price of the dominant option, you change people's buying patterns towards those alternatives. Simples economics.

A roll of specially-designed bin-liners costs the equivalent of about five Euro cents per bag here, and you can get them in biodegradable varieties. You're wasting your money by using shopping bags.

There already are better bags, they're offered for sale alongside the cheap nasty ones. Either more durable plastic, or foil-lined bags for freezer items, or a range of light-to-heavy-duty fabric bags.