Plastic bags going away for grocery store chain
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COOS COUNTY, Ore. -- The option of paper or plastic is going away for some south coast shoppers.
Starting on Monday, the three Ray's Food Place stores, located in Bandon, Port Orford and Gold Beach, will stop offering plastic shopping bags.
The grocery chain says it wants to be an industry leader in environmentally friendly practices, so shoppers will now have to either bring a reusable bag or paper bags will be provided.
Bags will also be for sale in the store for about a dollar a bag.
Ray Brewer, the manager of Ray's in Bandon, says they have already started getting people ready for the change. "Probably six weeks ago we started the preparations, getting everything lined up and ready to go/we have some people who've been using their own reusable bags for some time, and they are really excited about the move," he said.
Customers are being offered incentives to use reusable bags, including a five cent discount per bag used.
Brewer says Ray's will continue its plastic bag recycling program.
The road to hell is paved with good intention. Same policy will take effect at my local Safeway. Here is what will happen. And, it doesn't take a crystal ball to predict. Germs will spread from people re-using their bags. Homeless people's food items will get soggy and so will the bags they use to collect refundables. Bicyclists will have the same proplem. Infact, more traffic collisions will occur, since paper bags usually don't have handles that allow the bicylists to steer with both hands by drapping/looping the plastic bags on their wrists or handle bars.
Environmentally friendly? Having all of the garbage cans and dippsy dumpsters weigh 2X more because they are full of water saturated paper bags will increase fuel costs to the dump. And, increase the fuel required to incinerate the water logged refuse once it arrives.
Hopefully, forced demand for paper bags will create more jobs in timber/paper rich Oregon w/o making the factory towns smell like Albany did years ago. No doubt, an Oregon jobs initiative is behind this supposed Environment agenda. For that we may be grateful. It just may ripple effect enough revenue for the state to offset all of the above bad happenings that will occur. But, cloaking this initiative with environmental concerns seems a bit farsical.Â
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