Single-Use

     If you live inside the Austin Texas city limits, no more plastic single-use shopping bags for you.  Today a new city ordnance goes into effect banning businesses from providing plastic single-use shopping bags to their customers.  Even with the new regulation I am sure I'll forget to take reusable bags into Austin stores each time I plan to shop.  Hopefully keeping reusable bags in the automobile all the time will stimulate my bag-less memory.  But even if I do remember to take them into the store will I remember to place them back in my auto after I've unloaded the groceries?
     Making the transition to reusable bags is probably a good ideal but the new ordnance will surly frustrate many.   It will be a long time before Austin citizens become accustomed to toting their reusable bags everywhere they go.  Any disposable bag ban overstates the environmental impact of plastic bags.  If reused and disposed of properly, plastic single-use shopping bags are not as damaging as they have been made out to be.  The term single-use  is very miss leading.  I use plastic single-use bags to line all the small trash cans in the house and store all the ones I don't use, returning them to the store for recycling.   Hording the bags as I do is not for everyone.  Many people simply throw them away and that is the reason the City of Austin enacted the new ordnance that takes effect today.
     I'll do my part to save the planet so I will stop using the plastic single-use bags in Austin.  I might even make a fashion statement in the process.  I have collected a large assortment of the re-usable bag during the last year.  My only question, will I have to match the bag I chose  with what ever I am wearing that particular day?