My wife has been hoarding them for the last 10 years. I agree with reuse, but at the rate we use them vs the rate we consume them we have enough for the next 200 years.

I think it's more efficient all around to pay for them.

You could bring them back with you to reuse at the grocery store to balance use as liners vs new consumption. That's what I did before the plastic bag bans went into effect. Now I buy liners.

> The only difference is that now we have to pay for them.

Nitpick: you always had to pay for them, the cost was built in to the purchase price.

So, now that they no longer provide bags, but prices have not gone down at all, the grocery stores are suddenly seeing their profits increase?

> We always used them as garbage can liners

I started doing this "before it was cool" back in the 1990s. I wasn't aware of other people doing it so I couldn't understand why they weren't. I learned since then and I still do it today. Why use something once when you can at least use it twice?

I don't know where you live and how garbage disposal works where you live, but in general I would urge people not to do this. Proper garbage can bags are important because they don't spill out easily. This makes the job of the garbage disposal people much easier. Imagine having someone overworked and underpaid, working on autopilot and at fast pace, and suddenly your trash spills out. You will ruin that person's day.

> I don't know where you live and how garbage disposal works where you live

a dump truck with a giant mechanical arm grabs my trash can, picks up over the top of the truck, flipping it around in the process, and then shakes it violently.

Same here. I’m very surprised to learn that these aren’t universal.

Where I live, there’s no manual handling of individual bags by waste management employees. You throw your trash bags directly into a large compactor; from there, it’s handled in bulk.

Where I lived previously, residents brought bags to a warehouse-like building maintained by the town. You dropped your trash through openings in the side of the building that resembled windows. Town employees used tractors equipped with giant claws to scoop up the trash and load it into dumpsters, which were then brought to landfills.

Generally they're used for smaller trash containers like you might find in a bathroom. We use them like this and when they're full they get tied closed (the handles make this easy) and placed in the larger main trash bag in the kitchen.

At least in Los Angeles there are mechanized arms to pick up residential bins. I now live on the East Coast and that is no longer the case and definitely can’t use shopping bags as liners without consolidating them into a standard 13 gallon bag.

Are there really still places In the US where people actually have to physically manhandle garbage into a truck?!

Yup. Many rural areas like ours have weekly garbage collection. It's an ancient truck, with the same 3 guys ever since I moved here nearly 10 years ago. They hand toss every single bag. And when the truck breaks down they collect the trash in a pickup truck and handle it twice, once loading it and once unloading it.

Boston. New York. San Francisco (inner).