There’s a way to knit them together (large needles…it’s very quick) to make a waterproof mat/blanket for homeless people. I have a friend who does that and gives them to a local shelter to distribute.
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It’s part of the Flag Code. Girl Scouts, 4-H, active military, veterans, and respectful citizens of all types do it that way as well.
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Are you from the 70s, too? 
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Affirmative. As scouts, the connection to the military was not lost on us, nor the martial ambience of it all. Still didn’t stop us from group-urinating-out our campfires when our asst scoutmaster wasn’t watching. 
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I’ll confess, I’ve never seen Girl Scouts pull that one!
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Oh, yep.
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Pull?
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We’re the Mickey Mouse Club!!!
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It’s also part of the flag code not to put the flag on clothing, backpacks, bumper stickers, etc. Also not to fly it at night, or if it is, it must be lit. Funny how so few self-proclaimed patriots do any of those things. The US Flag code is like the Bible- people take what they want from it, ignore the rest, then proudly proclaim their strict adherence to same.
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Whole grocery stores have outlawed plastic bags in my area, takeout still often comes in plastic bags, and so many Amazon packages come in those fucking plastic mailers. Thankfully those can be recycled as if they were regular plastic bags but I can’t use the recycle bins so I have to basically bag those up so I can drop them off at the grocery store’s plastic bag drop-off.
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We just burn ours; the replacements from China are so cheap!
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Those types of plastic bags were outlawed here in New Zealand. So I use bread bags or the plastic wrapping from toilet tissue or package delivery bags for the kitchen rubbish.
hey, don’t kink-shame your mom’s owl.
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I’ve been doing a much quicker and sloppier version of the same thing, folding in half and again (without bothering to flatten on a surface and press the air out), then with the bottom end held between my index & middle fingers, wrapping it around those fingers until I get to the ends, then pulling my fingers out (unless I wrapped too tight) and tying with the handles in similar fashion.
Not quite as tiny a result, but faster and still less messy than just a ton of bags shoved in a drawer or another bag. Worth it? Depends on your comfort with messiness, I guess. 
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After learning my fellow Happy Mutants’ methods of coping with (and without!) plastic shopping bags,* I determined to do something about ours. They were living in 3 round, firm, and fully packed bags hanging off the door handles of the pantryish thing in the kitchen, and got in the way whenever access to those doors or the back door was needed. We’d even only recently complained about them together.
There are so many brilliant, sane placcy bag storage methods above which tame the chaos. They’re all great, but we have so many that not all were potential solutions for our situation. My favorite is the tissue box idea. Dang. I had been breaking down tissue boxes for the recycle bin Just Before Reading This.
I grabbed a small shipping box, and easily put the contents of one bag in it. I used a couple sticky labels from the box to casually close it. I grabbed a couple much smaller boxes and repeated.
I wound up w/an empty tissue box after all, a type I figured would work well. Today I’d discovered the ‘squishing and squinching them up really hard into a tiny ball’ method, so I did that to the remaining bags as I jammed them into the tissue box, & easily made room for it all under a kitchen window.
I esp love BBers when they get all extra clever and helpful.
You helped me solve a very annoying longstanding problem! 
*The Jamaican term is ‘scandal bag,’ i.e., ‘plaStiChANDLE bag.’ Mi love dat, yu knoa? Always made us smile whenever it was said.
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In related storage tips, the Pop-Tarts box is a great size for storing about 8 thin-style beer koozies.
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Even more quickerer and sloppierer: Pull the bottom in one hand and the top in the other, then wind around x fingers making a birdsnesty torus. Then tuck the handles through the hole and hope for the best.
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