I have some pretty strong feelings against government bans of these kinds but I had an experience at ALDI, yesterday, that caused me to reflect a little bit on this.

Bear with me (if you wish) for a second ...

I love ALDI -- mine even has the new "self-checkout" which I thought "was the end of ALDI" -- one of my previous reasons I loved the place was their checkers are ridiculously fast and "except for bagging your own crap", getting out the store is fast. But the line at the checkout was long so I did it myself.

You bring your own bags or pay for theirs (with quality bags, most intended for long-term re-use, and I want to say they're $1 or $3, not $5 or $10 like is often the case for worse bags elsewhere but it's been a while). When I started regularly shopping there, I had forgotten mine, enough that I ended up buying a few and always went with the re-usable because they just weren't much more than their (otherwise fine/durable) disposables their large reusable ones seem massive[0]. It's been a while, but I never need more than 4, rarely more than 3 for a whole cart.

Yesterday's trip changed something for me: In self-checkout the big space they give you to set your groceries is sized such that my old bags fit perfectly, all 3, on the tray. Every one of these miserable places is making me self-check, anyway, but they've got the most hassle-free setup (camera-based, doesn't complain every time you things shift -- no weight sensors). But the simplest things make all the difference: I could set three bags next to one another, opened flat ready to receive scanned groceries. Mix in ALDIs ridiculously large barcodes and I've got "Fridge", "Freezer" and "Other" and I'm grabbing an item, whipping it across the "scanner", getting a "ding" 100% of the time and tossing most of the groceries into the appropriate bag. It was the least hassle checking out of a store I've experienced to date and part of why it was so convenient was "the re-usable bags". You already have to bag your crap at ALDI (you can finagle getting your bags setup in the receiving cart when the checker starts but nobody remembers in the chaos of the ALDI check-out experience) and moving your full cart over to "the table", setting your bags and the like is far less convenient (the table, for one, is higher -- the self-checkout bagging area is easier to get bags in/out of).

If every company executed on it like they do, I'd stop complaining about missing the "free plastic tissue things" that I don't know are appropriate to call "bags" any longer given how little they successfully carry. Especially since I could bring in an entire cart of groceries (with the bread and eggs resting gently on top) in three large bags with exactly zero concern that I'd be picking groceries up off of the lawn. As it stands, I can't believe I'll probably use ALDI self-checkout every trip despite my love for how well their checkers rip through a cart full of groceries. They introduce a handful of inconveniences but at a certain point, the problems they "solve with those inconveniences" end up making the experience better with them. For example, I can't think of a time I've gotten a busted up cart at an ALDI, or found an empty cart vestibule in an ALDI store that wasn't so packed I wouldn't want to go inside, anyway. The prices reflect the inconveniences generously enough that you don't spend as much time fussing over cost and just buy the things you want/need.

So while I don't support government bans like this (nor do I support it specifically in this case), if most companies handled "the experience of bringing my crap home" as well as ALDI does, I'd find little reason to complain about it.

[0] My daughter uses one to bring her mid-size (not small by any means) tower PC to and from our home weekly; same one for going on a year, now ... I check it every week when she packs it and the stitching looks great.