IKEA will begin charging customers for plastic bags

Marta Galante loads her car outside an Ikea store in Conshohocken, Pa., Photo: George Widman, AP.

From an article in Display and Design Ideas Magazine:

Swedish home furnishings retailer IKEA will begin charging customers for plastic bags on March 15, as part of its goal to completely eliminate plastic bag use from all of its stores, according to Hfnmag.com. ... IKEA will charge its customers 5 cents per bag with all proceeds for this program year going to American Forests, the nation’s oldest non-profit citizens conservation organization. IKEA also will reduce the price of its reusable blue bag, down from 99 cents to 59 cents. IKEA projects that the number of plastic bags used by its U.S. customers will be reduced by 50 percent in the first year, from 70 million to 35 million. Americans use more than 380 billion plastic bags every year.

IKEA is believed to be the first major retailer in the United States to undertake such a program, according to National Retail Federation spokesman Scott Krugman. Last June, IKEA began charging its U.K. customers for plastic bags, and has reduced its bag consumption by 95 percent, said spokeswoman Mona Astra Liss. According to Reuters, the average American family of four throws away about 1,500 single-use polyethylene bags, which do not degrade for 1,000 years, and less than 1 percent are recycled. "We believe Americans are starting to be more conscious of the environment," Liss said. "Our objective is to get people to really think about the impact of the bags which are strangling the planet."
-------
Ireland taxes plastic bags, which has reduced by 90% the number of plastic bags consumed within the country. See "Ireland to Raise "Green" Tax on Plastic Bags."