Wal-Mart to Reduce Plastic Bag Waste by 33 Percent
Wal-Mart has announced that they plan to cut their plastic bag waste by a third by 2013.
They plan to achieve this goal by selling reusable bags. Wal-Mart already sells reusable bags for a dollar each, but they plan to make these even more affordable, with a cheaper model being released next month in Arkansas.
The initiative is expected to cut the equivalent of 9 billion plastic bags from stores each year, and eliminate more than 135 million pounds of plastic waste globally in the next five years.
Wal-Mart say that their aim is to reduce plastic bag waste by 25 percent in the U.S., and 50 percent worldwide.
Matt Kistler, senior vice president for sustainability at Wal-Mart says:
If we can encourage consumers to change their behavior, just one bag at a time, we believe real progress can be made toward our goal of creating zero waste”
This is encouraging news, although I wonder what’s stopping them from aiming a bit higher. A 25% reduction in the U.S. doesn’t seem like much. But I guess it’s a good start.
And at least the world will have 9 billion less paper bags each year.
Then, we’ll need to figure out how to get rid of the other 999,999,991,000,000,000 plastic bags that we use each year!Wal-Mart to Reduce Plastic Bag Waste by 33 Percent
Tags: plastic bags, reusable bags, wal-mart
