Some fair points. However, many (most?) reusable grocery bags these days are made from jute, or a mix of jute and cotton, not cotton. Jute is much more environmentally friendly than cotton, and it can be rough so minimally processed. We're not talking about those highly-processed fashion cotton bags (that don't really replace plastic bags). Some cloth bags are made with plastic, which is still better than single-use plastic bags (esp since one of those larger tote bags, like the kind at Trader Joe's replaces 4-5 of those plastic bags that supermarkets would bag your groceries in.

It's also not about how much plastic is used to create the plastic bags, it's how much environmental pollution is created from the bags.