From July 1 supermarket customers in Western Australia will have to bring their own bags or shell out for reusable ones when a ban on supplying single-use plastic bags takes effect.

The ban has provoked both dismay and praise, but the biggest question for many seems to be what to line their bins with when the supply of free plastic bags dries up?

"I will have to go back to buying heavy plastic bin bags, which defeats the purpose for me. Our supermarket bags were used as rubbish bags and recycled in other ways," Facebook commenter Sharon said.

But plastic bags only came into wide use during the 1960s, which prompted some to ask how previous generations coped.

At a Woolworths supermarket in Perth in 1970, customers were offered paper bags and boxes for their groceries. ( Supplied: State Library of Western Australia )

Eighty-year-old Roberta Holland said the pre-plastic bag era was one when composting was the norm and food was sold with little packaging to begin with.

She grew up in Perth in the 1940s and '50s.

"The main difference I think was that we didn't buy things with lots of covering so we wouldn't have had so much rubbish," Ms Holland said.

Roberta Holland remembers when food was delivered unwrapped and there was far less household rubbish. ( ABC Radio Perth: Emma Wynne )

"We had a greengrocer called Mr Taylor who called at Clifton Crescent in Mt Lawley once a week.

"You'd just take a shopping bag, put all the vegies in, unwrapped, and it went straight into the house."

The same sort of home delivery system applied for bread and milk.

"I was always sent on my bike down to the butcher in Beaufort Street and he would just wrap the meat in white paper," she said.

"I think if you went to most shops they would just wrap things in paper; no plastic bags then.

"The thing that everyone had was a string bag, they just held the wrapped packages that you got from the shop and they took up no room at all."

Ms Holland cannot recall her family having a bin in the kitchen, and the household's waste was a fraction of what would go in today's wheelie bins.

"We did have a rubbish bin [outside] but it was only knee height," she said.

"To get rid of what rubbish we had, and it was not much, Dad dug a hole in the backyard; we all had big backyards then.

"Every morning, if there were things like off fruit, you would just chuck it in this hole and put sand on the top.

"It was doing wonders for the soil."

'More and more plastic'

Peter Harrison is 75 and grew up on a farm in WA. For him, the plastic bag ban is long overdue.

Peter Harrison believes the plastic bag ban is long overdue. ( ABC Radio Perth: Emma Wynne )

"I don't remember lining the bins with anything," he said of his childhood.

"When I was young one of my jobs was to tip the bins out.

"It was a tin bin and it was only [filled with] stuff that could not be given to the chooks or composted.

"And as I grew older there was more and more plastic.

"It's quite bizarre when stuff like cheese, which is already wrapped in a wax outer, is coated in plastic and then put in another plastic bag when you go through the checkout.

"I know at some checkouts, if I just come with the vegetables and I haven't put them in a plastic bag, the staff are quite troubled."

'You don't need to line your bin'

For some ABC Radio Perth audience members, a bin-bag-free future is possible.

Kate: "I've been putting loose waste into my bins for months now in a bid to reduce plastic. I generally wrap particularly messy things in a bit of old newspaper and I rinse the kitchen bin out regularly. It's actually not as hard as I thought it would be at first."

Renee: "You don't need to line your bin. Rinse food containers, wrap food scraps in newspaper and chuck in the wheelie bin straight away. Better yet, get a compost bin."

Jo: "Why can't you use paper bags? Our oceans are littered with plastic and all you care about is bin liners."

Melissa: "My stainless steel inside bin has a removable plastic inner with a handle. I am guilty of still buying plastic liners for it as I use my own reusable bags for shopping. In all honesty I should just be able to go without bin liners."

Others have a more pragmatic approach to the imminent withdrawal of free supermarket plastic bags.