WOOLWORTHS COULD BE ASKING CUSTOMERS TO RETURN SHOPPING BAGS

Waste has long been a problem in South Africa. That’s why many retailers opted to charge their customers for buying plastic bags when they shopped. This has been the norm for many years.

Now recently, premium retailer Woolworths decided to stop offering plastic shopping bags to their customers, but rather offer a reusable shopping bag made from 85% recyclable PET plastic.

This reusable plastic bag costs R7, considerably more expensive than the less than R1 bags offered at other retailers.

Brent Lindeque, known as GoodThingsGuy to his followers, recently tweeted that like many South Africans he has been accumulating these bags and it has caused a major problem.

“But while the bags were a good idea to stop the plastic problem they’ve also created another problem, ‘a Woolies bag problem”, he posted.

He then suggested that Woolworths either buys their bags or give customers the option to donate them back to the store.

The retailer responded to his post by saying “We are trialing a bag return initiative at one store which we hope to expand soon, but those returned bags will be recycled as opposed to given to other customers (which is tricky in current times).

Let’s see what they come up with.

Image credit: Daily Maverick