As part of the public consultation on the issues and impacts of a ban on single-use shopping bags in retail businesses on the territory of the City of Montréal, the CIRAIG produced a brief to provide its thoughts on the life cycle of shopping bags. These thoughts are both environmental and socio-economic in nature, with the inclusion of social life cycle analysis concepts, and may serve to fuel the debate within the City of Montréal. Since knowledge on the subject is limited, this document provides the avenues of study needed to fully understand the potential impacts of implementing a policy to reduce the use of single-use bags in the Montréal context.