L.A. City Passes Bag Ban

Yesterday, the LA City Council voted to ban single-use plastic bags in retail stores. The decision has been a long time in coming. I'm all for reusable bags and hope that the ban will have its intended effect, to reduce waste and pollution. Here's the LAist coverage, and here's my blog post on refusing plastic bags from August of last year.

One of my reusable bags.

For those of us who have been bringing bags with us as a habit won't have too much of a change in store (no pun intended). But there are many who never got on the reusable bag bandwagon, and they will need to incorporate reusable bags into their lifestyle if they want to avoid paying 10 cents for a paper bag every time they shop.

Some tips for remembering your reusable bags:

• Get the kind that zip up or stuff up inside themselves and keep several at the bottom of your purse.
• Stash bulkier canvas or vinyl bags in your trunk.
• Create a place by the front door to hang bags (Command hooks are great for this) so you can grab recently emptied ones on your way out the door to replenish your car stock.
• Always bring more bags in to a store than you think you will need, just in case you underestimate how much you will be purchasing.