Look, Ma, No Bags!

Ikea took the next step in eliminating plastic litter today when it stopped offering disposable bags at its checkouts. Wow.

They started the bag reduction program a year or so ago. They started selling more inexpensive reusable bags at the checkouts and charged five cents per disposable plastic bag. The disposable bag fee was donated to an environmental charity. They'd hoped to reduce disposable bag usage by 50% - but they got 92% fewer bags instead!

Actually, it's probably much easier for Ikea to go bag-free than it would be for other stores. Usually when I go to Ikea I buy at least one box or basket that I can pack the other things inside. And a lot of their furniture comes flat-packed in cardboard boxes that don't fit in bags anyway.

On the other hand, I hear Whole Foods is going this way too. Not sure if they will eliminate disposable bags, but I think they are going to start charging for them if they haven't already.

I've been pretty happy since I started using reusable grocery bags. It's just much less guilt in my life. I used to reuse grocery bags for trash, but now we use big kitchen bags, and even when I used them I always had a big backlog of once-used plastic bags accumulating in my kitchen or basement. It took some work to get used to bringing the bags into the store, but I seem to have got the hang of it. Also I have a tiny nylon bag that fits in my purse for emergency shopping. Yeah, it happens.

Still, I am a little nostalgic about the Ikea bags. I remember when the store first came to town, those big yellow bags were always associated with good things. Even when they changed to clear bags, they had good design. Even if they did change the cinnamon rolls and make them crappier (okay, I still buy them, but not every time - the old ones were much better). There are still a few Ikea bags floating around my house, as dust covers for off-season fans and in bags of fabric I haven't used yet. So they'll be with me for a while yet. Better there than in the ocean!