Supermarket Bans Bags, for One Day
by Matthew Sparkes, London, UK 
on 04.19.07
English supermarket chain Sainsbury's are boycotting disposable plastic bags for one day, and give out free reusable bags instead. The chain normally charge 10p for these, and have estimated that the scheme, running on Friday next week, will cost them £700,000.
Sainsbury's bags have been in the news recently, in September they changed their design to include one third recycled materials. The store also began awarding loyalty points for every bag that customers avoided using at stores. Although how this was measured I don't know; I can see how you count bags that people do use, but not how you could count the bags that they don't.
On their website, Sainsbury's offer an explanation as to why they don't charge for bags all year round;
"We did a 'pay-for' trial some years ago where we did charge the cost price for carrier bags to our customers, but our customers where not happy and complained. From these trials we decided to stop charging our customers for carrier bags and fall in line with other retailers."
This seems like a missed opportunity. Sainsbury's discovered how reluctant people would be to pay for bags, and therefore how likely they would be to use reusable bags, and decided to carry on as before. That doesn't seem to be the action of a company that truly has a commitment to the environment.
With most of the food market in the UK dominated by three chains, it seems that a mutual pact or organisation, whose members committed to charge for disposable bags would be both practical and beneficial. It would drastically reduce plastic waste in this country, without negatively impacting sales for members, as long as enough stores joined.
Perhaps TreeHugger could act as the head of such a movement? Shops could register with us, and pledge their commitment to charge cost price for disposable bags. If Sainsbury's, Tesco and Asda all became members, then so would every other supermarket in England. In other countries, where paying for bags is the norm, then people tend to take their own bags. Perhaps legislation is needed, to force this behavior upon nations that don't have that preexisting culture? :: The Guardian
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Why aren't they giving away free, bio-degradable paper bags instead though? What proportion of these 10p "reusable" shopping bags will be residing in landfills by the end of next week?
In Ireland (where I am), the government tax on plastic shopping bags has been a huge success, and it's success will only continue and improve when the tax goes from 15c to 22c in the next few months. Everyone brings heavy-duty shopping bags to the supermarket. Not 10p "reusable" ones, but €1.50 canvas or waxed-canvas "bag for life" style ones. A lot of corner shops don't even offer the taxed plastic bags anymore at all, opting for brown paper bags instead.
Paper bags are a lot more energy and resource intensive than most people think. Best is still reusable bags.
There's a neat store down here in Florida, where you get little token for the bags you don't use. Then you put the token in a little box that goes towards a charity of your choice. If a box gets, say 1,000 tokens, then the store donates the cost of 1,000 plastic bags (albeit not a lot of money) towards the charity.
The effect isn't any great donations, but when the grocer asks if you prefer a token, rather than putting your milk jug in a bag, then you will almost definitely say, "of course!"
The way the "earn points for the bags you don't use" program works is like this ...
Say you go in and buy three items, that would normally be one bag, but you use a reuseable bag --> you get a point
The biggest drawback is that it relies on the cashier to estimate the number of bags *saved* which means that it can vary greatly. At the stores that this is put into full practice (which is not every store), it can be effective.
Whole Foods actually does this reward for bags you don't use - when I've loaded my own bags instead of using theirs, they've given me 5 cents back per bag I brought. Maybe this is just the one in the Time Warner Center in NYC, but I like it. Of course, it would work better if they charged 5 cents for their bags, but small steps.
Earth Fare operates similarly, except they go one better than Whole Foods. For every reusable bag you use they give you a ten cent discount and give a ten cent donation to the local community group of the month. Plastic bags that customers have brought in to recycle are placed in the entrance next to information about the community group, allowing shoppers to grab bags if they haven't brought their own.
There is a huge difference between 're-useable' and 're-used'.
All that will happen is that Sainsbury's customers will percieve a better quality of free bag for the day, and arguably more, better grade, plastic will end up going to landfill.
Nice idea Sainsbury's but I'm not convinced.
My local supermarket is a small-ish chain in Satiama Japan. They have a point card system were you basically get 1% of your total bill in points that can be used against purchases like cash. If you bring your own bags, or just tell them you don't need bags you get extra points.
I'm from Belgium, and most market-leading supermarkets reward you for shopping there. Each purchase adds points to your account, and when you have - let's say - 500 points, you receive store credit for about 10 dollars. They also reward you for bringing your own bag, or using a reusable bag from the store. It works, because that way you can earn 'free' points.
I also notice more and more that stores just remove the disposable plastic bags.
Actually instead of banning the bags outright why don't they teach their baggers to use them more effectively? There was one grocery trip not that long ago where I brought my canvas bag and handed it over to the bagger. She put in the bag of pretzels and two other (very light things) into the canvas bag, then put two 2-liter bottles of soda into a triple-plastic-bagged bag. After I was done paying for my food I re-did the mess she'd made of it and managed to fit everything I'd bought into that single canvas bag, eliminating the need for plastic at all. The girl just stared at me and then said "sorry" and walked away.