IKEA Says No to Plastic Bags
April 3, 2008 by Allison Boyer
Filed under Business
In a report today, IKEA announced that they’d be phasing out the use of plastic bags in the United States.
As part of a corporate strategy to go green, IKEA set a goal to reduce bag usage by 50%. In October, they began selling bags at the checkout line, charging $0.05 for a one-time-use plastic bag and charging $0.59 for a reusable bag (I’m assuming a recycled cloth bag, but I don’t shop at IKEA often, so I’m not sure.)
The program was a success, with a whopping 92% of customers opting to either purchase the reusable bags or not use bags at all. So, IKEA has decided to complete phase out plastic bags this year, as they previous did in their UK and Australian branches.
Side note: They donated all the proceeds from the bag sales to an organization focused on planting trees and savings our forests.
Plastic bags are a huge problem in today’s businesses. Single-use bags are not only filling our landfills – they are also made with nonrenewable petrochemicals. Even China is systematically phasing out their use.
And when China is banning something, we in the United States need to sit up and take notice.
Does this make me want to shop at IKEA more often? Yes. I’m interested to see what else this company is doing to go green.
Source: GreenBiz.com
Picture from WikiCommons by Stern.
Hi, Allison:
Another interesting post. There’s a grocery store by us that is phasing out plastic bags, too. We’ve already purchased several of their cloth bags. Now, this isn’t the store where we buy the bulk of our groceries, but we do visit it on a weekly basis for specialty items.
Personally, getting rid of plastic bags is fine by me. As you mention, they’re a huge strain on the environment.
I agree, Dan. It’s a one-time fee to purchase the cloth bags, and they aren’t a budget-breaker. I know that I would waste about ten plastic bags every week – maybe more – just from groceries alone, if I didn’t go cloth. That’s 500+ bags a year!
And realistically, what I save in garbage costs from not throwing away all those plastic bags more than makes up for the cost of my cloth bags. I love that IKEA is doing this and hope that some other companies follow suit.