It takes a long time for that article to get to the point that I consider whenever I hear of plastic bag bans: the Natural Resources Defense Council quote about reusing.

Every couple days I go to the store and buy food and other items, and carry them home in plastic bags. I take the items out and put them away, and put the plastic bags into a cupboard in my kitchen. Then, when I take out the trash, I go to that cupboard and re-line my trash cans with the plastic bags. I also sometimes use the bags to carry my lunch to work so it doesn’t spill into my messenger bag, or for other miscellaneous tasks around the house. The bags are eventually thrown out when they’re used to transport something that spills, smells, or otherwise results in the destruction of the bag. I don’t think I’m unique in reusing plastic bags. Most people I know seem to have them around the house. A friend of mine even has a device in her kitchen that stores bags and makes it easy to pull one at a time out of the bottom.

A plastic bag ban in my hometown would basically mean that I’d have to start BUYING bags to perform all these tasks. I don’t see how this would be better for the environment. How do you take out the trash without disposable bags? Putting food waste in a brown paper bag alone isn’t going to cut it. It’s an invitation to rats and stench up the block and leaking as I carry it. It seems to me that encouraging people to reuse their plastic bags would be a much smarter move than banning them. Maybe issue fines to people who carelessly throw them away without using them again?