Austin would be ill-advised to ban plastic bags

In the Austin American Statesman an article titled Austin would be ill-advised to ban plastic bags, author Burnett speaks about the topic of Austin choosing to ban all plastic bags in all retail stores. In his opinion it would be a bad idea for this to occur. He argues the case that it has been argued the reason behind doing this is because plastic bags account for 2.2 percent of the cities liter, which in reality is false. He says that this information has been exaggerated by Gedert who's information turns out to be all wrong. Steven Steins correction to this mis representation of information was that the correct numbers was 0.6 percent, this number even being higher because it includes the numbers of other plastic wastes such as industrial wrappin, dry cleaner, and trash bags. The other argument that is made in this article is that the ban of plastic bags also takes away jobs from Americans. Because, plastic bags are produced in America the stopping of this production and using of more reusable bags, which are made in China, gives more opportunity for China to succeed in this business production, while Americans are left out of work. Austin businesses will lose sales and tax revenues due to this ban as well. In another point that the author made, which I think is a good one, is that plastic bags are not generally only used once, but for multiple purposes inside of the home. Plastic bags are used for trash, animal waste, and diapers. Without these bags it will likely result in more purchasing of plastic bagies for these purposes. This article was obviously posted prior to this ban being enforced in the Austin area in March of this year, but I found myself agreeing with many of the points that the author made throughout this article. Though I am all for keeping our city of Austin beautiful and reducing liter, I was unaware of some of the good points and numbers that he used to back up his opinion. It appears to be that the author of this article had a solid opinion of this matter and he backed it up with subtancial information.