EUGENE — Pushing a cart full of groceries from the Fred Meyer store in north Eugene on Wednesday, Tracy Brandt said the city’s 6-month-old plastic bag ban has barely changed things in his household.

Brandt said he and his wife had long brought reusable shopping bags to stores, so they didn’t have to make much of an adjustment once the ban took effect on May 1.

“I try to be more thoughtful when I go shopping and remember to bring bags,” he said.

Brandt took his groceries from a store on Division Avenue in three reusable bags and one paper bag. Some foodstuffs were laid loosely in the cart.

Brandt had to pay a nickel for the paper bag.

“If we get too much and have to drop a nickel for a paper bag, it’s no big deal,” he said.

About six months after the ban removed thin plastic bags from Eugene stores, Brandt seems to be representative of many consumers who are generally accepting of shopping without plastic bags.

The ordinance requires retailers to charge a minimum of 5 cents for each paper bag. The fee is meant to encourage people to bring their own bags. The minimum charge also was added to the ordinance at the request of the Northwest Grocery Association to help retailers recover the cost of paper bags, which are more expensive than plastic ones.

Henry Johnson, manager at the Santa Clara Fred Meyer, said customers have replaced plastic bags with a combination of reusable bags and paper sacks. Some customers carry items from the store by hand or in shopping carts.

“It’s kind of a mix,” Johnson said. “But we are definitely seeing more reusable bags being used. There is no doubt about that at all.”

But not all Fred Meyer shoppers were as abiding as Brandt about paying a nickel for each paper bag.

Junction City residents Ken and Carmen Rankin on Wednesday had two reusable bags in their cart.

The nickel-per-paper-bag charge riles Ken Rankin. He views it as another example of heavy-handed government.

“You just have to go with the flow,” he said about the ban. But the fee is “just another way of controlling the citizens.”

When the City Council passed the ordinance to implement the ban, it required the city staff to present a report six months after it took effect. The council wanted to know how the ban was working and whether it contributed to an increase in reusable shopping bags being brought to stores.

To answer that question, shoppers recently were surveyed at eight grocery stores, Stephanie Scafa, a waste analyst, told the council on Wednesday.

Fifty-four percent of the 173 shoppers said the ban had led them to bring bags to the store more often than they had before the ban, she said.

Thirty-five percent of respondents said the ban hadn’t changed their habits, Scafa said, with 11 percent of the shoppers saying they had brought bags to the store before the ban took effect.