By Owen Giblin
The popular grocery store chain Wegmans has removed plastic bags from its stores to help the impact plastic bags are having on the environment.
Photo of Wegmans in Lancaster
In September of 2022, Wegmans stated that it will slowly start to they rid of bags at its 18 Pennsylvania stores. According to Wegmans, the company will take a phased approach to getting rid of the single-use plastic bags, in order to provide customers with ample time to purchase reusable grocery bags. If customers do not have reusable bags, they will be able to purchase 5 cent paper bags or be given no bags if they would prefer to go without them. On September 22nd Wegmans officially removed plastic bags from all of its 18 Pennsylvania stores. Since that time, the store has required all customers who wanted bags to use the options of paper or reusable bags. Wegmans removed their single-use plastic bags to reduce the complications that they often cause for the environment.
Plastic bags cause problems for the environment and animals such as pollution- they cause danger to the water and sea creatures living in that body of water, and they produce greenhouse gases. Additionally, plastic bags are causing an immense amount of pollution. For example, it has been theorized that each person uses on average about eighty-three plastic bags a year. A large amount of those bags is thrown away or become litter. When considering the whole human population, the number of plastic bags used per year comes to an estimated 6.4 million yearlies. This use of non-reusable plastic bags is problematic because they are not recyclable. This leads to pollution because the bags don’t break down unless they are environmentally friendly bags made from corn, which biodegrade quickly. Additionally, man kind’s use of plastic bags impact sea life greatly because they commonly mistake it for food, and it clogs their intestines. Other times when sea life mistakes bag for food, it ends up choking them, or hurting creatures such as sea turtles or even penguins in general. Furthermore, single use plastic bags affect the air because they cause carbon to turn into methane, a greenhouse gas. Noting all of the effects that the use of plastic grocery bags has on the environment, there are ways to decrease the number of problems that single-use plastic bags cause. One eco-friendly option is using biodegradable plastic bags made from corn; however, those are shown to be more expensive, which means that companies will be less willing to utilize this strategy. So next time you are thinking about using plastic bags maybe consider using reusable or recyclable paper bags in order to not contribute to the negative effects caused by non-reusable plastic bags.
The popular grocery store chain Wegmans plans to decrease plastic bags by the end of the year. According to Wegmans, they are doing this to decrease the amount of plastic waste in the United States. In April of 2022, Wegmans announced their plan to get their customers to shift to using reusable bags instead of plastic bags to solve the environmental problems that single-use plastic bags cause. Wegmans found that their idea of getting plastic bags removed from all of its stores to be well-received in other states with plastic bags bans, because 75 -80% of people already used reusable bags or did not use any at all. Wegmans sees that this could be an easy thing for people to adapt to with the numbers shown of people who have adapted quickly to the shift in removal of plastic bags. Pennsylvania customers should be no different to the shift of plastic bags being removed from their stores. From now on, to help the environment when you go grocery shopping, head to Wegmans and bring reusable bags- and you can aid in reducing the environmental issues created by the use of plastic bags.
https://strawpoll.com/polls/xVg7d4GArZr
Photo by :Owen giblin
Showing that they don’t carry plastic bags at self check out
Photo by :Owen Giblin
Paper bag station at wegmans
Photo by:Owen Giblin
Photo advertisings their own reusable bags
Related story 1
Philadelphia’s plastic bag ban
https://www.inquirer.com/philly-tips/plastic-bag-ban-philadelphia-enforcement.html?outputType=amp
On April 1st, 2022 Philadelphia announced that they would be stating to roll out the plan to ban plastic bags . The city of Philadelphia banned plastic bags to help save the environment . Philadelphia has banned single use plastic bags and other bags such as paper bags or plastic /paper bags that are less than 2.25 millimeters thick and are intended to be reusable are banned. The city of Philadelphia is not lenient at all with the plastic bag ban and says no matter the size of the business that all businesses must comply with their ban of plastic bags .
Why you should use reusable bags over plastic
https://www.pens.com/blog/why-use-reusable-bags/
Reusable bags aren’t just a cool trend that people have picked up recently that will fade away like all trends do they actually have many advantages, . Reusable bags help a lot with pollution because as the term states they are reusable unlike plastic bags which a huge environmental footprint because most single use plastic bags are not recyclable causing them to cause problems and pollution because they can’t be recycled. Reusable bags save you money because some places charge for bags, such as Aldi or wegmans in Pennsylvania .Reusable bags also save resources , it was shown that 8% of the worlds oil is used to make plastic and 12 million barrels of oil are used to make plastic bags. By using reusable you’re saving the amount of oil being used to help us use it for other things.
Profiles
Colleen Wegman
Wegmans president
- Colleen Wegman is the CEO of the Grocery Store Chain wegmans since 2017.
Colleen joined the family business with wegmans in 1991.she worked many types of customer service jobs with the company before she got promoted and became a store manager . She is one of the main people behind Wegmans e commerce and digital presence online. Colleen is also credited with coming up with how wegmans is a store within a store which specializes in different things such as specialty , organic , and healthy food i terms together through natures marketplace .This plan Colleen came up with is a plan many grocers follow today .
Zidikiyah Morrison – frequent shopper of wegmans
- Zidikiyah goes to Wegman’s frequently for grocery shopping and has always used reusable bags at the grocery store. Miss Morison Says She has not experienced any problems with the plastic bag ban, but she’s used their plastic bags before when she had forgotten before the bag ban . She had been using lots of bags when using plastic but has decreased her plastic bag use and a number of plastic bags she threw away to solve the issues that plastic bags are causing to the environment since Wegmans introduced the plastic bag ban, making her remember her plastic bags . Using plastic bags increases her impact on the environment to be safer.
References
Myers, M. (2022, April 2). Everything you need to know about Philadelphia’s plastic bag ban. https://www.inquirer.com. Retrieved December 7, 2022, from https://www.inquirer.com/philly-tips/plastic-bag-ban-philadelphia-enforcement.html
Wegmans Food Markets: Grocery & Meal Delivery or curbside. Wegmans. (2022, December 6). Retrieved December 7, 2022, from https://www.wegmans.com/
Wegmans to eliminate plastic bags in Pennsylvania. Wegmans. (2022, September 8). Retrieved December 7, 2022, from https://www.wegmans.com/news-media/press-releases/wegmans-to-eliminate-plastic-bags-in-pennsylvania/
Why everyone should use reusable shopping bags. Ledger. (2022, June 9). Retrieved December 7, 2022, from https://campuspress.yale.edu/ledger/why-everyone-should-use-reusable-shopping-bags/
Why we should use reusable bags (and how to actually do it). Why We Should Use Reusable Bags (and How to Actually Do It) – National Pen. (n.d.). Retrieved December 7, 2022, from https://www.pens.com/blog/why-use-reusable-bags/
Writer, T. O. M. L. I. S. I. | S. (2022, September 8). Wegmans to ban plastic bags in its PA stores on Sept. 22 [update]. LancasterOnline. Retrieved December 7, 2022, from https://lancasteronline.com/news/local/wegmans-to-ban-plastic-bags-in-its-pa-stores-on-sept-22-update/article_598f15b6-bc2d-11ec-86a6-e7adc5f0f06d.html