Plastic Bag Ban

The plastic bag ban was started on March 1st 2013. The ordinance is likely to save 197 million single-use bags per year. The ordinance did not banning all single-use plastic bags. You can still get one at restaurants for example. Austin has shown a huge decrease in plastic bag use since this was ban was activated. Plastic bags can take over 400 years to break down, keeping the environment cleaner in the long run with out them. Only 5 percent of plastic bags are recycled. A study showed that in Austin single-use plastic bags only make up 6 percent of plastic bags used, while in the sounding central Texas area its 85 percent. In the same study, it showed that reusable bags make up 94 percent of all plastic bags in Austin, while in the rest of central Texas its 15 percent. Some people think by stoping the use of plastic bags would increase the use of paper ones instead. While in some cases you would get paper bags, in my experience, I would bring cloth bags around with me. While it may take a few weeks to remember to take your bags with you or to put them back in your car after use, it will become part of your routine. Whenever I go to Round Rock or other sounding cities, I forget that they give you bags in store. Whenever I get plastic bags, I don't usually remember to recycle them. This makes the impact of these bags bigger. Banning bags makes day to day life a little harder by remembering to bring bags but helps the environment not have a  piece of plastic sticking around for at least 400 years. Making the ban a small inconvenience on us, a bigger help to the earth. The plastic bag ban has made an impact already and should move on throughout other places as well.