Carbon Conscious Consumer Blog

Many of us have been closely following– and participating in– ongoing efforts to reduce plastic bag usage. While most campaigns have targeted consumers, encouraging them to bring their own reusable bags or, at the very least, recycle their plastic bags, major retailers have generally escaped the pressure cooker and continued to make plastic bags readily available. Until now.

Marking a huge stride in the campaign against plastic, Whole Foods announced yesterday that it will be instituting a ban on plastic bags in all of its stores. Once this policy goes into effect on April 22 (who doesn’t love that they’re kicking off on Earth Day?!), Whole Foods customers will no longer be greeted with the refrain of “paper or plastic?” to which we’re all too accustomed. Instead, Whole Foods will incentivize shoppers to bring their own bags with a five cent refund for every reusable bag they present at checkout, and will continue to offer recycled paper bags for those off-days when we forget our reusable bags at home.

Think this is a great move? Let Whole Foods know!

We, as consumers and activists, can use this precedent established by Whole Foods to pressure other retailers into following suit. As the following NYT article suggests, Whole Foods has been highly influential in swaying other chains to improve their produce and organic offerings. So let’s use this momentum to continue effecting change within the industry and encourage other grocery chains to sack the plastic bag habit. And here’s to a day when “paper or plastic” is permanently replaced by “thanks for bringing your own!”

Whole Foods Chain to Stop Use of Plastic Bags

From: The New York Times

By Andrew Martin

January 23, 2008

The Whole Foods Market chain said Tuesday that it would stop offering plastic grocery bags, giving customers instead a choice between recycled paper or reusable bags.

A rising number of governments and retailers are banning plastic bags, or discouraging their use, because of concerns about their environmental impact. San Francisco banned plastic bags last year unless they are of a type that breaks down easily. China announced a crackdown on plastic bags a few weeks ago, while other governments, including New York City’s, are making sure retailers offer plastic bag recycling.

Whole Foods officials said they had hoped to eliminate plastic bags for some time but had to decide how to make it work in the chain’s 270 stores.

A. C. Gallo, the company’s co-president and chief operating officer, said Whole Foods tried to get customers to buy reusable bags for several years but “it really never caught on.” That changed when the grocery chain began offering reusable bags for 99 cents, he said.

In addition, he said, Whole Foods was given a test run of sorts when San Francisco banned plastic bags last year. The number of paper bags used in the San Francisco stores increased a mere 10 percent, he said, suggesting that some customers switched to reusable bags.

Two other trial runs, in Toronto and in Austin, Tex., also went well enough that Whole Foods executives felt confident broadening the plastic bag ban to all its stores. It will take effect by April 22, Earth Day.

Whole Foods officials estimate that the store distributes 150 million plastic bags a year.

“The fact of plastic bags is they are not something that has been around forever,” said Michael Besancon, a regional president of Whole Foods and the leader of an environmental task force. “It was paper for many, many years. It’s not really a hardship.”

Plastic bags have become ubiquitous because they are lightweight, cheap and functional. Critics complain that the bags are bad for the environment because they are made from petroleum, are typically tossed after one use, fill landfills, and float into trees, rooftops, roadways and oceans.

They also do not break down easily in a landfill.

An industry organization called the Progressive Bag Alliance, however, counters on its Web site that plastic bags take less energy to produce than paper bags and generate less waste, a position backed by at least one study of the issue. The group also argues that virtually nothing decomposes in modern landfills, including paper and plastic.

The Whole Foods decision is “a bold move, without a doubt,” said Allen Hershkowitz, director of the municipal waste program at the Natural Resources Defense Council. He noted that Americans use 50 billion to 80 billion plastic bags a year.

He acknowledged that paper bags can also harm the environment. But he described Whole Foods Market’s use of bags made from recycled paper as an environmental “winner.”

Whole Foods is a relatively small retailer, but has been influential in the grocery business. Major grocery chains have copied Whole Foods by sprucing up produce sections and offering a wider variety of natural and organic products. The company’s move may prompt other chains to take a look at the bag issue.

Tara Raddohl, a spokeswoman for Wal-Mart, said her company began selling reusable bags in October and was looking to achieve a goal of zero waste.

“Generally speaking, many of our retail competitors as well as ourselves are looking at these options, and how feasible this is, and how this will be received by the consumer,” she said.

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