Throwing away plastic is very bad for the environment. Plastic can take thousands of years to decompose. But you can wash plastic bags and use them again! If you hand-wash them they can be used a lot of times instead of just once. And it’s way better for the environment!
Sure, it’s harder to do, but it can be one less piece of plastic that gets dumped into the ocean or in a landfill. You can also reuse plastic shopping bags. You can bring it home and use it for other things.
Many, many other things can be reused instead of being thrown away. Plastic silverware, plastic straws, plastic bottles, and many more.
As you all probably know, you can also recycle most plastics, but a lot of plastics cannot be recycled. So it is better to reuse most plastics.