My grandmother was fastidious about her canvas shopping bags. She washed and ironed them regularly and demanded their prompt return from borrowers. In those pre-1989 days, milk was sold in pre-sealed plastic bags, which we dutifully washed and reused for storing food in the freezer.  There were hardly any other plastic bags in those days.

Even in the first post-totalitarian years, plastic bags were a luxury of the West, coming mostly from duty-free stores, and especially precious when branded with Marlboro or Camel. Back then, it was even fashionable to carry your schoolbooks in such plastic bags. Except, it wasn't hip to carry them using the handles; one had to roll the top and carry the bag like a plastic clutch, even if it meant having one's nails permanently stained in Marlboro red.

As late as 1997, when I moved to the United States, I kept a stash of GAP bags in my closet; I guess I found those particularly alluring, due to their clean branding and the string that replaced the handles.

It's been a while since the plastic bag was a collector's item in Bulgaria, but in its own, inversed, way, the phenomenon is still very much with us. Plastic-bag-starved Bulgarians are now gorging on their abundance. We've gone plastic-bag-happy to a point bordering on the absurd: store clerks would place a pack of chewing gum or a yoghurt in a complimentary plastic bag and take offence when you refuse this extra packaging, which is clearly, in their minds, a measure of good service, a gesture to be appreciated, not rebuffed.

I know this, because it's become the topic of a routine confrontation that marks my shopping experience. This is how the conversation unfolds:

"Thank you," I say. "I don't need the plastic bag."

"No, that's fine," the clerk says, securing my yoghurt in the flimsy pale blue plastic contraption. I'm not sure what exactly is “fine”. My guess is the store clerk interprets my refusal as a sign of modesty and is reassuring me that there's plenty where this bag comes from. There's plenty where it's going to as well.

"I really don't want it," I insist. At this point, if there is a queue, I'm getting a bit embarrassed because Bulgarians are not very patient with customers slowing the queue.

"Are you going to carry the yoghurt just like this?" the clerk says, visibly annoyed at my lack of logical thought.

"Yes, I live around the corner."

Finally, the clerk reluctantly and grumpily un-bags my yoghurt and places it in front of me as if issuing a silent challenge akin to “Let me see you carrying that without a bag.” (For the record: I've no physical handicaps.)

Given all this, it should come as no surprise that this year, in January, the trees were already abloom. Large plastic flowers in pastel shades of pink, blue, green and yellow adorned their otherwise bare branches. In my travels, I'd come across vast fields that were beginning to look like plastic bag dumping grounds.

Now, I can't pass for exceptionally eco-minded. I'm guilty of wasting an entire CD for a few pictures. I've yet to recycle glass and plastic containers regularly, even though there are recycle bins next to my apartment building. I'd install an air-conditioner in my south-east facing apartment in a flash, especially come August. But the plastic bag thing just gets to me.

By some estimates, the plastic bag is the single most ubiquitous consumer item on earth, numbering in trillions. Only one per cent of plastic bags are recycled worldwide and the rest, when discarded, can persist for centuries. They don't end up spending eternity in landfills, however. Even when disposed properly in the trash, they tend to blow away and become litter. They cartwheel down city streets, billow from fences, get tangled in tree branches, clog storm drains, wash into rivers and then out to sea. There are 46,000 pieces of plastic litter floating in every square mile of ocean, according to the United Nations Environment Programme. In flood-prone Bangladesh, where plastic bags choked drainage systems, the bags have been banned since 2002.

So, please, try carrying your yoghurt home without the plastic bag; it's easy, you'll see. Plus, consider this: bringing your own bag is the latest eco-chic statement. When designer Anya Hindmarch's “I'm not a plastic bag” bag hit stores in Taiwan, there was so much demand for the limited-edition bag that the riot police had to be called in to control a stampede, which sent 30 people to the hospital. Ah, the risks of being eco-minded.