Ikea to Charge for Plastic Bags
Customers leave Ikea International AS’s 29 U.S. stores everyday with Nordic-named house wares and assemble-it-yourself furniture, but the Swedish home-furnishings retailer wants to see shoppers walk out with one less thing: a plastic bag.
Ikea announced Tuesday that it will start charging customers five cents for every plastic bag they use to carry their purchases. Proceeds from the surcharge will go to an environmental-conservation group.
“We really feel the timing is right,” said Pernille Lopez, president of Ikea North America. “It’s a small step, but we feel it’s good for us as a company, and it reduces our impact on the environment.”
Ikea’s U.S. stores went through 70 million plastic bags last year – and officials want to cut that in half over the first year of the “bring your own bag” policy.
Proceeds from the surcharge will go to the nonprofit group American Forests to plant tree, with dual goals of restoring forests and reducing carbon-dioxide emissions, she said. Ikea will also sell its reusable bags for 59 cents, down from the current 99 cents, for customers who forget to bring their own.
The intention is to essentially eliminate the uses of plastic bags. Ikea implemented the bag charge in June across Britain, and the company anticipates more than a 90% drop in disposable-bag within the first year.
“The majority of the people we talk to are quite supportive and really think it’s a good idea,” Ms. Lopez said.
Environmental groups say plastic bags waist valuable oil resources, release toxins when burned, and contribute to global warming because of the energy required to produce them. They also say bags littering the oceans annually kill sea turtles and other marine animals that mistake them for food.
Americans discarded more than 4.4 million tons of low-and high-density polyethylene bags, sacks, and wraps in 2005, according to a report by the Environmental Protection Agency. Only 5.2% of those were recovered for recycling, the EPA said.
Other U.S. businesses, including the no-frills Aldi supermarket chain ands warehouse clubs like Costco Wholesale Corp.; charge for disposable bags.
The National Retail Federation, an industry group, wasn’t aware of any other large national retailer that has a plastic bag fee. Some grocery chains do provides incentives such as discounts and shopping spree raffles to customers who bring their own bags, spokesman Scott Krugman said.
Several countries have either placed a surcharge or an outright ban on throwaway plastic bags, including Ireland, Australia, Singapore, Taiwan, South Africa and Bangladesh. IN Ireland, their use plummeted 90% after a 20-cent-per-bag “plastax” started in 2002, raising millions of dollars for environmental programs.
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