We've had a plastic bag tax here in Wales since 2010/2011-ish. To start, single use bags were available but cost £0.05, now a lot of stores tend to only sell thicker reusable bags, starting at around £0.20. We've seriously reduced the amount of plastic bags we use here - and we try to recycle the ones that have broken etc. via collection points at supermarkets. A portion of the money made by selling the bags goes to charity. The other UK nations followed in subsequent years by bringing in their own bans on free single-use plastic bags.

Even our small country of 3 million people was using hundreds of millions of bags per year. By 2014, we had seen a circa 71% reduction in single use bags, and the usage continues to fall - we now use less than 100 million per year. It is well worth it!

Stats source: https://gov.wales/sites/default/files/statistics-and-research/2019-12/sale-and-use-of-carrier-bags-in-wales-summary.pdf