It started about a decade ago. I was attending the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers in Pittsburgh, PA and after paying a couple of hundred bucks for registration six months earlier, I arrived at the conference to pick up my registration supplies. Instead a a nice shoulder bag made of nylon, we all got a canvas tote bag with the book of abstracts and miscellaneous materials about the conference.
Ten years later I am using that bag and others on a daily basis. The "nicer" should bags carry my school notes for a class while the cheaper cloth bags are kept in the cars to use when I shop at the grocery, pharmacy, hardware, farmers market and so on.
I can put the bags in the laundry to clean them and they are just great!
Do you carry cloth bags for shopping?