RETAIL - Earth to shoppers: Bag the plastic sack - As stores devise ways to cut back on the environmental hazard, IKEA is charging 5 cents each. Not everyone is warming to the idea.
When it comes to sacrificing to help the environment, IKEA shoppers are like everybody else: conflicted. Even if what they're sacrificing is a nickel.
The home products retailer charges 5 cents per plastic checkout bag, and customers are either happy that IKEA is doing something positive for the planet or irritated that they would have to fork over anything for a flimsy little sack or some combination of both.
"It's pretty ridiculous," said Will Sisto, balancing 12 drinking glasses and two glass coffee pots in this arms as he headed to his car in the Costa Mesa store's parking lot last week, nursing a nasty sprained ankle. "I'm not going to pay any money to get a bag."
In the big business crusade to be greener than the other guy, IKEA gets kudos from environmentalists who recognize the Swedish chain as the first major retailer in the U.S. to put a price tag on the bags made of thin, flexible plastic film that clog landfills, don't readily decompose and can suffocate wildlife.
The infamy of the nonbiodegradable plastic shopping bag is recent, but the war against it is moving fast. The bags will be banned altogether in San Francisco this fall, and similar embargoes are being considered by other jurisdictions. A state law that went into effect Sunday requires large grocery stores and pharmacies to recycle plastic bags returned by customers and to offer reusable bags for purchase.
Plastic bags are so reviled that reusable conveyances for groceries are the rage. Trader Joe's sells a canvas sack for $2.99, while luxury retailer Hermes asks $960 for one made of silk. IKEA's oversize tote, called Big Blue Bag, goes for 59 cents.
Even with prices like that, some people won't give IKEA a break, griping that the store is charging for something that ought to be free. The company tries to be understanding.
"It's a change; it's a new way of thinking," spokeswoman Mona Astra Liss said. "Any change has a certain level of uncomfortableness to it."
She added: "We're hoping that people will make wise choices."
To encourage them, IKEA, which started charging for its bags in mid-March, placed signs near registers that say: "The world uses a trillion plastic bags a year. Unfortunately most end up in the trash or in the ocean or in trees
The signs recommend that people buy the reusable tote rather than drop 5 cents on plastic but note that every nickel spent on the latter is donated to American Forests, a nonprofit group in Washington, for the planting of trees to offset carbon dioxide emissions.
