Disagree with the law, but this is picky. You should have your things already in boxes anyway aside from fruit, in which case there are bags anyway you can get to put in the cloth bag.
The bags are great. Worrying about bacteria is crazy.
“You should have your things already in boxes anyway aside from fruit” And what about veggies?
The only boxes in my grocery cart do not contain food for human consumption-many of us prefer nice, fresh foods to canned, frozen and boxed processed stuff-and that goes better in plastic bags than cloth ones that get leaked into-germy and unsanitary, and fall apart in the washer with the bleach and hot water needed to sanitize them. I take the cloth bags to the dollar store to put toiletries and other non-food items in, so they do get used here, just never, ever for food...
Paper bags leak and disintegrate, especially when you transport them the 20+ miles from the nearest grocery store, leaving a mess of icky wet paper in the truck or SUV.
Unless they were used to transport packages of meat, plastic bags are recycled to clean the cat litter box, line most of the trash cans, empty the vacuum, consolidate small tools, etc-nothing wasted.