I like the way Whole Foods does it now in NYC. If you bring your own bags, you get 10 cents off your bill. It’s silly…but I feel as if that rewards good behavior rather than penalizing “bad” behavior. Trader Joe’s has a raffle. I’ve never won but I enter every week. Most of the stuff I buy is wrapped anyway.
The best though is the compost program. I put my food garbage–not including dairy, fish or meat–in a paper bag and bring it to the Green Market. Our local one collects more than a ton of compostable garbage a week. It’s turned into soil.
BTW, paper bags don’t help. They weigh more than plastic and can’t be scrunched up the same way. So, delivering them to a supermarket uses more gasoline and takes up more space on trucks, making it necessary to use more trucks. In other words, they add pollution to the air and waste gasoline.