Italian supermarkets, at least all those i saw during my vacation there this summer, had bio-degradable bags for almost everything. Those that weren't you had to pay for. Not sure why that isn't the case everywhere. Of course, bringing your own non-plastic bag would be better.
Yeah, Italy is surprisingly good in this regard - even their recycling seems well-organised, although I'm still unsure how/why they mix soft plastics in with bottles, etc. I was under the impression that sort of mixing screwed up the recycling chain.
I know I'm at constant loggerheads with my Italian partner who keeps putting soft plastics in the recyling here in London, even though it's supposed to be filtered out!
Us Germans are recycling for what seem to be forever. At first the Italian system (it is quite a while we spent time there) was really confusing. One get's used to it so, I still mixed up the colors between organic and plastic waste occsionally so.
Are we talking "paper bags" or "bio-degradable plastics" here? The former is trivially compostable, whereas the latter requires industrial composting conditions, and depending on the polymer type, might just end up "composting" into microplastics.
Plastics. I used to work for a chemical additive manufacturer a while back, they had additives for foils that resulted in a brake down into molecules that could be consumed by bacteria in the ground. Even did some tests according some EU standards. Not sure if those bags in the supermarkets were up to those standards.
IIUC biodegradable plastic bags must be fermented in an industrial fermenter to break down properly. If it ends up in nature it will break down to microplastics.
