California passed a law a few years back that effectively bans single use plastic bags and requires retailers (except those that had a strong enough lobby) to sell paper or thicker plastic, but still mostly single use, bags for 10 cents.

Not sure the intent of the law was met since most people just buy the bags and now we have no way to recycle them. We at least could take them back to the store that gave them to us to be recycled before…

It was like that when I lived in northern Italy 20 years ago too. Back here in the US, my city has recycling, but if you follow the recycling trucks, they dump it in the same sorter as the garbage, so our cans are a sham. When we passed a law requiring businesses to charge for bags, they removed all of the bag recycling containers too. So if anything, it just became more expensive to shop and the plastic bags use more plastic but are not reused anymore than they were before the law…

s/Capitalism above all else baby!