Monday, October 06, 2014

If Austin can do

A year and half ago while shopping at Walgreens I saw the notice "by city of Austin ordinance, use of 1 time carry out bags will be banned". I wasn't sure what it meant and when asked the store clerk he said the plastic bags I had taken for granted for ever cannot be used anymore and people are encouraged to bring their own bags.

Came home and told Sandhya the same and she was glad to hear this. As it turns out we had quite a collection of plastic bags sitting in our garage (this collection was from last 1 year or so since we moved here to our new place).

Yes, once upon a time we did try to use them as trash liners but considering a lot of them will tear at  the minimum amount of stress we weaned away from them specially for the kitchen and then occasionally used to use them sometimes for bathrooms. Frankly speaking they were a pain to use, I was glad to find the 10-gallon size trash liners at Costco.

It took me a while to get used to the no carry bag concept as I would end up at the store without the bags (on the way from work or some such things) and end up either carrying the items in hand or buy their newer/thicker bags.

For the thicker bags, previously we used to have 2 to 3 designs for the carry bags that would cycle through and new designs take their place once in a blue moon but now a days the designs keep changing every few months, it appears as though a new industry has started because of this (In my opinion, Whole Foods carry some of the cool designs ). Now, we have an assortment of bags and some of them are permanent residents of our respective cars.

I am sure it was a big ordinance and the city must have faced a lot of opposition as no other city in Texas including our next door neighbors have implemented the same. I am proud of my city Austin for taking this bold step.

Frankly we have been trying for a few years before the ordinance to use less plastic bags but I admit we had failed miserably. Now a days it feels strange when I shop in our neighboring cities and they bag the items in those white plastic bags.

I think it's one of those things in which a strong ordinance bought a good change, In my opinion the next thing to tackle is the Styrofoam carry out boxes.

No comments: