Walmart Canada has announced that beginning in February it will stop providing free plastic bags to customers and will charge a fee for the bags.
Beginning February 9th, 2016 customers will be charged five cents per plastic bag as they are encouraged to use reusable bags instead. The ultimate goal is to see plastic bags eliminated from land-fills entirely. This latest initiative from Walmart is one of 12 programs conducted by the community that has resulted in the diversion of 72 per cent of Walmart Canada’s waste from municipal land-fill sites.
Customers are encouraged to use reusable bags, which will be sold at a discounted rate of 25 cents.
"We recognize we are asking our customers to change their shopping practices, but we strongly believe that removing plastic film from our waste stream is imperative to reaching our goal of zero waste and will encourage our customers to broaden their already existing waste-reduction efforts," said Lee Tappenden, chief operations officer at Walmart Canada. "We know from our experience in other international markets that an incentive in the form of a fee to encourage customers to adopt reusable bags reduces single-use plastic bags by more than 50 per cent. Similar programs here in Canada have reported comparable successes."
In addition to offering reusable bags and implementing a plastic bag fee, Walmart will be improving its in-store recycling and collection programs. The company is working with suppliers to find new ways of removing plastic from its packaging processes. Partial proceeds from the five cent fee will be used to support plastic film recycling initiatives.
"Recent internal research has identified that our customers feel we use too many plastic bags and that the reduction and elimination of plastic bags are the responsibility of both consumers and retailers," said Tappenden. "While we recognize our ultimate goal of eliminating plastic film from our operations altogether won't happen overnight, we believe our customers are open to supporting this goal by switching to reusable bags."
The elimination of free, single use plastic bags will roll out in British Columbia first, then work progressively across the country at all 397 stores nationwide.
