2009.10.19
Incentives for toting your own shopping bags
The incentives are rising for shoppers who refuse to use plastic bags.
Target and CVS have joined the small number of retailers nationwide that are offering slight savings on your bill if you use reusable sacks, rather than plastic bags, according to this story. Environmental groups claim that plastic bags are harmful for the environment.
Starting Nov. 1, Target will give you a 5-cent discount for every reusable bag that you use to pack your purchases at its stores across the country.
Also at CVS stores, you can earn Extra Buck savings when you scan a special green leaf tag and your CVS card. The green tags are supposed to be attached to a cloth bag or a similar sack. After four scans, CVS will give you a $1 Extra Buck coupon.
But you have to pay 99 cents to get this green leaf tag.
CVS is launching this program at 7,000 drug stores throughout the next three weeks.
What's your take on these programs? Will you take advantage of these small discounts for toting your own bags to the store?
I already have several of the re-usable bags and will continue to use them for most of our purchases. I do use the non reusable bags for our bathroom trash cans and for cat litter, so I do wind up having an adaptive re-use of them when I get them...which is usually when we have unplanned trips to the store. I try to keep a couple bags in each car for those times and the bulk of the bags in our pantry for when we shop though. The money savings aren't a whole heck of a lot, but not having hundreds of those bags lying around is definitely worth it! I also have a canvas bag that I store the empty plastic bags in, and when it gets full, I gather them up and recycle them the next time I go to a store with one of the bins, which is pretty much anywhere nowadays (Lowes, Wal-mart, Kroger, Food Lion, etc).
Comment by Other John — October 19, 2009 @ 3:32 pm
Millie's in Salem has a reusable bag that is good for savings on regular priced store merchandise!
Comment by catcat — October 19, 2009 @ 5:11 pm
I'll certainly take advantage of this, it's about time. I'd like to see a similar program at Kroger.
I use plastic bags for kitty litter but there are enough people still using plastic that I can always get them from someone.
Comment by Robin — October 20, 2009 @ 9:10 am
Great idea, yeah right.
We now carry a little plastic card for each store we shop at that says we can pay the price that the item should already have been marked.
We ring up our items in the self service lane, reducing the stores overhead, yet no benefit for our time & effort.
Now we should carry our own containers into the store. WAIT! Be sure to stop at the front door so you can wait in line for the container to be marked that you brought it in with you. Ooppss! I brought a CVS bag for Lowe's, or is that WalMart, Kroger, or...
Who knows! What's the next brainchild to come forth?
Sarcastic & cynical, yes. Tired of all the nonsense...
Comment by Steve — October 20, 2009 @ 10:45 am
What about training the cashiers to properly bag items to use as few bags as possible? I'll get something that's in a bag or bottle, with a carrying handle, than will then be put into a single bag by the cashier. Or at the local grocery store, 5 items will result in 3-4 bags being used.
Personally I'd prefer to see a return to paper bags, recyclable, reusable, stand up on their own and hold a lot more than a plastic bag, and are more durable when it comes to items with sharp corners. Maybe I'm getting old, but I remember when knowing how to properly bag items was a skill.
Comment by Doug Pirahna — October 20, 2009 @ 12:20 pm
Doug there is a place that had the paper bags. But they close and the end of the week.
Comment by Mike D — October 20, 2009 @ 1:15 pm
Doug, when the baggers properly understand that Ortho bug killer should not go into the same bag as a head of lettuce, and that a package of ground beef should not be in with the box of cookies...then maybe they can make progress on putting the proper number of items in each bag. Until then, I prefer to ring up and bag my own because too few cashiers and baggers understand how to do the job properly. Another case on point: I don't know how many times my loaf of bread has been placed in a baf with a 2-liter of soda, or how many times the eggs have been below canned tomatoes.
Comment by Other John — October 20, 2009 @ 2:38 pm
Steve, I have probably half a dozen different bags from different stores, and I couldn't care less what bag I bring in when I go into one of them. If the Fresh Market people get hurt feelings from my Ukrops bag, too bad.
I do think it would be nice to get some sort of discount for self checkout and bagging. Somewhere along the line we got suckered into doing our own banking, bagging our own groceries, pumping our own gas, and doing a variety of jobs that used to be done for us by other people - and still pay the same or more. Not sure how that happened.
Comment by Kristen — October 20, 2009 @ 3:13 pm
It's called 'improved customer service' I think Kristen. The stores can say they improved customer service by making the customer wholly responsible for their own service. I don't really mind it so much, I've been a cashier and bagged goods for a long time, so it doesn't bother me any. But I agree, it would be nice to get some sort of additional incentive for doing it all yourself...they only need one cashier to work 4-6 self-service registers, so there's got to be a savings there. Though, from what my wife sdaid about Food Lion's self checkouts, the cashier had to do a lot more because the darn things would mess up several times a day and go down. She hated having to deal with them.
As for the brand name bag deal, I don't care either. I have bags from Food Lion, Whole Foods, Harvest Moon, Kroger, Great Valu, and Wal-Mart, and I just toss them all in a Kroger freezer bag when I go shopping. I'll pull out as many bags as I need and pack things in. I can generally get what would go in about a dozen plastic bags into about 4 or 5 re-usable bags, makes carrying stuff in from the car a lot easier.
Comment by Other John — October 21, 2009 @ 8:26 am
how about just returning your plastic bags to kroger so that they can recycle them back into more kroger bags?
Comment by Jimmy — October 23, 2009 @ 12:22 pm
If they really want to change people's habits then they should charge a nickel premium for new bags rather than give a nickel discount for bringing your own.
Comment by tass — October 26, 2009 @ 10:24 pm
Yeah, we all need to spend more money, what with all the excess lying around.
Comment by Tim Felter — October 27, 2009 @ 9:47 pm