I agree that on average, a cotton bag will not have a reuse of one. Some cotton bags absolutely will only be used once, however. Sometimes it's even predictable that a cotton bag will only be used once. Ideally, we would get people to use whatever product is best suited for the situation at hand on a quality-environmental impact pareto front. There is no catch all that's going to be the best solution in every situation. We shouldn't give out plastic bags like their going out of style, but I'm also not sure we should eliminate them completely.
> I think that is where we might disagree the most. Quality cannot be measured, it can only be known. I hate that this reads as touchy-feely, but I don't know a better way to put it. Once you accept that quality cannot be measured in numbers, it is liberating. Then it allows you to argue in a different paradigm; How your neighborhood "feels" because there's no plastic bags stuck in roadside shrubbery, the peace of mind knowing that your drinking water doesn't have microplastics in it, ... that's genuinely immeasurable. Yet it is the stuff that makes up quality of life. People can be convinced of those qualities, and their value, _without_ quantifying them.
Yes, I was trying to say that quality is hard to measure by calling it an ill-defined metric. You are still trying to maximise it, even if you cannot measure it. I get that, I'm with you most of the way, but I just don't think you can only look at quality. We could be creating the most high quality neighbourhood at the cost of increasing entropy outside of it. Nothing comes for free.