The Green Rocket

Consider the following statistics from Bring Your Own Bag (BYOB), a branded, re-usable bag program:

• North American consumers go through over 110 billion plastic bags a year—equivalent to greater than 12 million barrels of oil.
• For the most part, these bags are not biodegradable and therefore break down into smaller toxic bits that contaminate our soil, rivers, lakes and oceans.
• Hundreds of thousands of hundreds of thousands of sea turtles, whales and other marine mammals die every year from eating discarded plastic bags mistaken for food.

As BYOB and many other environmentally conscious organizations assert, reducing plastic bag use can make a big impact on our landfills and in turn, our environment.

Accordingly, the Loblaw-owned grocery chain Zehrs celebrated Earth Day today with a bang by implementing a new policy to charge customers 5 cents for every plastic bag requested. The new policy is part of an environmental campaign started January 12, 2009 in the Toronto Loblaws stores. The objective is to reduce plastic consumption by nudging shoppers into reuseable bags.  In addition, cash from the fees will go towards WWF Canada for the next three years for a grand total of $3 million. According to the company, the remainder will be invested back into the business to help keep prices low and used to cover the costs associated with the new program.

As I grocery shopped today and complimented the new policy to the cashier, I was disappointed with her response. She commented that I was one of a few customers that had positive feedback for the new policy.  While I maintain that every day should be treated like Earth Day, for the average consumer this is not always the case. Apparently the new policy left many customers with a negative word or two to share.  The cost of the program for a consumer who purchases ten bags of groceries per week would be $26 per year.

Beyond my experience, however, The Record and The Niagara Falls Review have found that many customers are indeed willing to accept the new policy, even if somewhat begrudgingly.  According to an article published by Centre for Civic Governance on a bag ban, polls have shown that 75 to 80 per cent of Canadians are willing to make environmentally friendly changes, including reducing plastic bag use—let’s see if Zehrs customers can put their money where their mouth is!

Comparatively, Zehrs’ competitor Sobeys does not plan to charge for plastic bags, noting that it would rather offer customers a choice. The company maintains its participation in a provincial campaign to reduce plastic bag use, selling reuseable bags, and accepting used plastic bags for recycling ensures that it does its part.

So far the Loblaws campaign has seen success—according to the Zehrs website, after 6 weeks, all participating stores showed an average 75% decrease in plastic bag usage compared to the same time period in 2008!

Complimenting Loblaws’ new policy is a new Toronto bylaw that will force all retail stores to charge a nickel for every plastic bag requested as of June 1^st. According to The Record, it is uncertain whether councils in Waterloo Region (TheGreenRocket’s home base!) are able to regulate plastic bags, noting that Toronto council has special powers for such bylaws. Something worth writing to your MP about to find out? I think so.  In the meantime, bringing your own bag to the grocery store is certainly worth thinking about.

Keep checking in for our upcoming article on the details of plastic bag consumption, including its impact, detailed information and case studies about how the fee works, and alternative strategies.

Creative Commons Attribution: “stop using plastic bags“, Flickr, inga_beretta

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