On April 22, 2013 - Earth Day - few counties around SF Bay Area started banning use of plastic bags and started charging for reusable bags if customers did not bring their own bags when shopping.
Environmentally, I'm all for it. I never liked plastic bags and very annoyed with ones that were super thin and ripped easily with a slight stretch. What's the use for bags when they can't even hold stuff? But of course, these plastic bags - with holes or not - can be useful for other purposes. I mainly used them as garbage can liners and dog poop bags. They were also great as dust covers. I know I'll miss the free supply of plastic bags when mine is depleted.
San Francisco was the first county to ban plastic bags. It took some getting used to. The question you hear all the time now is, "Do you need a bag?" The most frequent scene you see on the street now is people's hands full of their purchases if they don't have a bag. People adapt though, and you see all sorts of bags, boxes, sacks, baby strollers, etc... anything to hold stuff and not pay that darn ten-cent bag fee.
One thing that I keep thinking is how businesses feel about people using bags from their competitors in their stores. Would I want to see a Lucky's bag coming out from a Safeway store? Do I want to see a Walgreen's bag going into a CVS store? I don't think so, but how do you stop customers from advertising/marketing the wrong brand?
Case in point: I was at BevMo yesterday with a red Trader Joe's wine bag in hand. I had a good chat with the Store Manager and picked up couple of wines at his suggestions. He saw me putting the wines in my TJ bag and handed me a green BevMo wine bag and said, "Here, this is from me. Tell the cashier no charge." I joked, "I used the wrong color bag, huh?" He smiled and said he hoped I will use their bag for shopping next time. We had a good laugh and I felt obligated to transfer my wines to the green BevMo bag before I walked out the store.
Very soon, I think this will become a business problem. How to increase your visibility and minimize inadvertent advertisement for your competitors? Is there a way to convince shoppers that they should use your store's bag when shopping in your stores? Better yet, how do you make shoppers carry and use your bags even if they go shopping elsewhere? Hmmmm.... I think this is a good thesis topic, yes?
For me, I'm thinking of using a basket for my shopping like the old days. I remembered Mommy - liked all other moms - leaving the house with a basket when they went grocery shopping. There were no plastic and paper bags back then. Everything was placed in the basket. I also remembered that moms liked to recruit somebody to tag along to carry the basket for them. Observation: the newly in-love men would happily tag along; kids usually dreaded being volunteered.
Anyway, welcome to the new brave world where plastic bags will be a thing of the past and fashionable shopping bags will become the norm.
Use Matching Bag!
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