Carolyn, I don't want you to be alarmed, but you sound so Bulgarian in this text. ;-) You are getting the Bulgarian sense of humour and the Bulgarian view of life.  You are becoming a Bulgarian!

These are short lived traditions. The plastic bag appeared massively only 20 years ago, and before that there weren't bags at all. We had only enormous sheets of brown paper which were used to wrap everything - from clothes to cheese. So, at the moment we are just overcompensating.

The undegradable type of bags will suddenly disappear and nobody will give a damn about this "tradition". The same will happen to smoking inside restaurants and bars.

Keep up the good work!