San Francisco May Charge for Grocery Bags

They've been charging for grocery bags in Germany for years and it definitely encouraged me and my mom to bring our own bags -- or to buy one set of bags from the store and use them again and again. Germany was definitely not suffering from the same level of plastic bag pollution I see in New York on a daily basis. But, then again, the culture there is more "practical" in the sense that they're more willing to engage in behaviours that suck in the short term for pay-off in the long term (such as complex recycling laws in general, very high taxes, and extremely articulate and exhaustive laws).