The good news, according to Whole Foods Market, is that its reusable bag incentive worked. The bad news is, it worked so well that shoppers are now going to have to dig out some more dimes to pay for their purchases.
As of a week ago, March 3rd, Whole Foods has officially ended its longstanding “Bring Your Own Bag” refund program. “Customers will no longer receive a 5 or 10-cent credit for bringing their own bags,” a customer service representative said in a statement to Coupons in the News. “With reusable bags now standard practice, this incentive program has achieved its objective.”
The program launched way back in 2008, when Whole Foods announced it would end the use of disposable plastic grocery bags in all of its stores. That made it the first major U.S. grocer to do so, which is noteworthy, considering some other major grocers haven’t quite succeeded in fulfilling their goal of doing so 17 years later.
“We hope to inspire shoppers to prompt positive environmental change by adopting the reusable bag mindset,” then-Chief Operating Officer A.C. Gallo said at the time.
So the retailer formalized a program that had been in place at some locations, and began offering a nationwide discount for shoppers who brought their own bags. Depending on the store, shoppers could get a refund of five or ten cents per bag at the checkout.
One year later, Whole Foods announced that it had seen reusable bag use triple, and estimated that it had kept 150 million plastic bags out of landfills. “To our great surprise, people have been truly excited about using reusable bags,” Gallo said. “Our shoppers have been inspired to make a positive environmental change and have really incorporated the reusable bag mindset into their daily lives. Eliminating plastic bags was definitely the right move at the right time.”
Some other more mainstream grocers tried offering similar incentives, but quickly backed off. Kroger and Safeway offered discounts for reusable bag use, but began phasing them out more than a dozen years ago. A Kroger spokesman said the company had seen no significant difference between the frequency of reusable bag use in markets that offered rebates and those that didn’t.
These days, several regional retailers and scattered individual stores still offer reusable bag incentives. And Target is one of the only national chains to still do so, offering a five-cent discount for each reusable bag a shopper uses.
But many communities decided that mandates worked better than incentives. As more cities and states implemented single-use plastic bag bans, reusable bag use became more commonplace among shoppers who had little choice anymore.
So 17 years after encouraging its customers to change their habits, Whole Foods has decided there’s no longer a need to reward them for something they’re doing anyway. All registers and self-checkout stations have now been updated to remove the refund option.
Nevertheless, reusable bag use “continues to be an important part of reducing single-use packaging,” Whole Foods said, “and we encourage all customers to maintain this environmentally conscious habit.”
They just won’t be able to save money by doing so anymore. But if they can save the planet – then maybe it’s a fair trade-off.
Image source: Whole Foods Market
