Plastic bags caught in the branches of a tree in a beauty spot, blowing along the streets of towns and cities, or clogging streams and ponds, have become symbols of the State's growing litter problem.
Travel writers have reported about them, environmentalists have campaigned against them, and this week the Government took the first step in tackling them.
It appears that Irish people are in love with the plastic bag, to judge from the consultancy study commissioned by the Minister for the Environment, Mr Dempsey.
Each year we use an estimated 1.26 billion bags, the equivalent of one bag each per day. Put another way, Irish shoppers use a plastic bag for every £4.25 spent in one of the major supermarkets, and the Irish plastic-bag mountain amounts to 14,000 tonnes each year.
The cost is considerable. Consultants Fehily Timoney & Company estimate that Irish grocers spend £20 million a year to hand out the bags, free of charge, for the convenience of their customers.
An estimated 80 per cent of all plastic bags are distributed by the grocery sector. The bulk of this money leaves the economy. Just 21 per cent of the plastic bags used in the State are manufactured here. The balance are from the EU and the Far East.
Although they account for just 15 per cent of the State's litter, plastic bags are among the most obvious and unsightly elements of the problem. National litter surveys in 1995 and 1997 identified plastic bags as the most visible litter, along with plastic bottles and fast-food containers.
Within a year of consumption they end up in the "waste stream", according to the consultants. With just 0.5 per cent of all plastic recycled, the bulk ends up in landfill sites.
Plastic bags are made from high-density polyethylene, low-density polyethylene and a mixture of both these polymers. The consultants note that because of their essentially inert nature, polymers do not biodegrade in landfill sites.
Apart from the visual intrusion, the authors believe much of the environmental impact of plastic bags stems from their longevity and durability in the environment.
The use of more degradable plastics could be the solution in this regard, with the consultants' report looking at photo-degradation (plastics that are broken down by sunlight) and biodegradation (plastics broken down by bacteria).
"The use of biodegradable plastics would have no effect on the problem of litter because the bacteria are not present in the general environment," the report notes. "However, as these organisms are present in landfill sites, plastics deposited in these sites would decompose within a shorter time than otherwise."
While photo-degradation could offer a solution to the problem of persistent litter, the authors note that plastic would take several months to degrade using this technique.
Despite the common perception that paper bags are more environmentally friendly than their plastic alternatives, this is not necessarily the case, according to the consultants. They looked at studies which took into account the extraction and processing of raw materials, through production, product use and final disposal.
The most comprehensive and up-to-date study, undertaken in the Netherlands in 1996, concluded that paper bags had a greater impact than plastic bags in terms of contribution to winter smog and acidification.
This is largely due to the greater energy intensity of paper-bag manufacturing. "Plastic bags on the other hand tend to come off worse in terms of emissions of heavy metals and contributions to summer smog," the report noted.
Despite the difficulties created by plastic bags, there has been a pathetic public response to efforts to encourage Irish shoppers to either avoid using them or reuse the bags they already have.
A 1994 ESRI report found that just 26 per cent of respondents claimed they either frequently or occasionally used their own shopping bag. Most of these were middle-aged or elderly females, the authors noted.
Superquinn's reusable bag, promoted in 1996 for just 99p, resulted in just a 2 per cent reduction in the number of plastic bags they gave out. Tesco/Quinnsworth's bag numbers fell by just 0.5 per cent as a result of its scheme to donate 1p for every bag reused.