Could we Americans, always in a hurry, adapt to a retail environment where no shopping bags are provided?  Not plastic or paper.  I've been to food stores in Europe where you must bring your own bag, buy a reusable, or carry your goods on your arm.  No bags provided settles the problem once and for all.  The reusable bags in France were quite stylish.

My mother used to work as a cashier at Walmart and they actually use information recorded by the register to guage how fast you work.  Walmart can tell you how many "items per minute" that each of its cashiers scans, on average, a measure of productivity for cashiers.  Pay, advancement, desireable shifts, and a lot more depend on being able to scan things at a fast rate and throw them in convenient plastic bags on a rotating platform (which is patented, by the way).  If they have to slow down the rate of merchandise leaving the store, or hire more cashiers, Walmart is going to lose profit.  I'd like to know how they're going to counter this...pay employees less?

John;  If Walmart starts encouraging the use of canvas bags, this will apply across the board to all cashiers.  Thinking this will hurt one employee over another makes no sense.  Also, my wife and I use them all the time and it doesn't slow down our purchase at all.  On the contrary it speeds things up because each bag holds more items.  Please don't pass judgement on something unless you've tried it yourself.

Currently Mall Warts entire business is fundamentally unsustainable.

Now if they would slice the amount of junk they sell and slice the number of stores that are in the middle of nowhere forcing people to drive to them.

I have tried to use canvas bags at Walmart a couple of times. Now, I shop at Aldi (a bargain grocery store that appears to be a transplant from Europe). Aldi actually gives you a strong incentive to bring your own bags (or any type) by selling plastic bags, by having the cashier not bag anything (they ring and put back into the cart) and by providing a space for you to take your cart over to (after checking out) and bagging yourself.

By contrast, if you want to use your own bags at Walmart, the cashier rings (rapidly as usual) and places the groceries on the small triangular space on top of the bag carousel. The first time I tried to keep up, transferring items from the small space into the bags in my cart. The second time, I gave up, just tossed the items back into my cart, and then wheeled the cart over to a bench after I finished paying for my groceries. I have found Walmart structurally hostile to the idea of canvas bags. No wonder they are looking abroad for most of the reduction in plastic bags.