Down a narrow alley in the heart of Beijing, Chen Yongge and his wife are coming to terms with the end of a way of life.

As he surveys his tiny convenience store, stocked with myriad goods from eggs to ice-cream, and cigarettes to peanuts, Mr Chen tries to visualise life without plastic shopping bags. “When my customers come in here, how are they going to carry out their eggs or their peanuts? I sell these by weight and then put them in a plastic bag.”

On the wall behind him hangs an array of filmy bags in assorted sizes. In five months’ time he will be forced to charge for them. “I know that this is supposed to protect the environment, but the days when people went out with a net bag ended in the late Eighties,” he said. “Now people think I’m just stingy if I don’t offer them a bag.”

During their country’s extraordinary transformation from agrarian society to industrial powerhouse in less than a generation, Chinese consumers eagerly embraced super-markets. With them came an exponential increase in the use of the ubiquitous plastic carrier bag: more than three billion are handed out each day.

But the practice is about to end. The State Council, China’s Cabinet, has ruled that on June 1 shops will be banned from handing out free bags, citing the environmental damage that they cause. It said: “Plastic shopping bags, due to reasons such as excessive use and inefficient recycling, have caused serious waste of energy and resources and environmental pollution.”

In the past, most Chinese would not venture out of doors without a cloth or netting bag tucked in their pocket to carry home their groceries, which would be wrapped up in paper.

But the ready availability of plastic bags in the new Western-style super-markets and traditional convenience stores has created an environmental nightmare.

Consumers discard their bags routinely without regard for the consequences: across the country plastic bags can be seen hanging from the branches of trees, festooned in ragged strips on hedges and fences, piled along roadsides and even rolling in the wind over the plateaus of Tibet, an inescapable blight on the landscape.

The nationwide ban follows the example of a remote county in western Qinghai province where plastic bags have been banned outright since 2005. Shopkeepers in Yushu respond with outrage to requests for a plastic bag to carry their purchases. Anyone providing one in the ethnically Tibetan region faces a fine of at least 500 yuan (£33) – no small sum for the local nomad population.

Officials say Yushu was probably the first county to take such drastic action. One county spokeswoman told The Times: “At first it was difficult to implement because people found it inconvenient. But because of local religious beliefs, people were more open to protect the environment and so Yushu seemed a good place to launch this policy.”

Under the new regulation, shoppers will have to pay if they want a plastic bag. The State Council did not say how much it would cost. It simply said: “We should encourage people to return to carrying cloth bags, using baskets for their vegetables.”

An outright ban will be imposed on the production of ultra-thin plastic bags less than 1.025 mm thick. The circular said: “The super-thin bags have especially become a main source of plastic pollution as they are easy to break and thus disposed of carelessly.”

China, which produces many of the world’s plastic bags, already has to refine five million tonnes of crude oil a year just to keep pace with the demand for plastics used in packaging at home. It urged rubbish collectors to do more to recycle waste by separating plastic for reprocessing and reducing the amount to be burnt or buried.

But some environmental activists questioned whether China’s tradition of top-down orders was the best way to solve its environmental crisis. They suggested that, rather than impose new regulations, it might make more sense to push stores to find ways to encourage shoppers to stop using plastic bags in exchange for small rewards.

Dai Qing, an activist, told The Times: “The problem isn’t necessarily about banning plastic bags, but finding ways to persuade people to care about their environment. That is something that comes with understanding and can’t just appear on command.”

Times Recommends

• It’s only Brits who don’t appreciate me, says Blair
• Party’s over for Greek graspers
• White House tightens security for Xmas marathon