Whole Foods is banning plastic bags!  Starting on Earth Day 2008, all of its 270 North American stores will stop offering plastic bags and instead offer recycled paper bags or reusable bags.  Think of all the plastic that will be saved by eliminating the distribution of 150 million bags a year!  

So many stores, cities, and countries are banning the bags that I can’t even keep track of them all, while others still remain skeptical about whether a ban would result in the use of more paper.  Today, those unfounded claims are further discredited by real research. 

Let’s compare results from Whole Foods research with the unfounded claims of Safeway.  Whole Foods experimented with banning bags in San Francisco, Toronto, and Austin and found that it did not create a significant increase in the use of paper bags and people switched to reusables.  Based on the study, Whole Foods felt comfortable with banning bags in all of their stores.     

Annapolis’ environmental champion, Alderman Sam Shropshire is taking a lead in this movement and challenged Safeway to change its policy on plastic bags.  Here is what Safeway had to say: 

Safeway will not require their checkers to ask customers if they would like to purchase a reusable bag because their “job is difficult enough” and they “wouldn’t want to give them another job function.”  Safeway also says it would be too costly to give customers a 10-cent-per-bag refund.  Safeway also says that a sign at the entrance of the store reminding shoppers to bring their own bags would interfere with their “clean, aesthetically appealing store entrance.”  Give me a break. 

On Earth Day, DC shoppers will be directly affected by this move.  Many of us will finally start to bring our own bags if we want to shop at Whole Foods.  This could inspire a major change in our habits that will leak over to our shopping experience at other grocery stores.  Whole Foods has already been influential to other major chains.  For example, major chains have beefed up their organics selection in order to compete with Whole Foods.  It’s only a matter of time until the bags are banned everywhere and I hope that DC will be leaders in the movement, not the followers.