Sprouts to trash use of single-use plastic bags by end of year

Dive Brief:

Sprouts Farmers Market is looking to stop distributing single-use plastic bags to shoppers by the end of this year, per an emailed announcement Tuesday. The grocer said it has also stopped providing paper bags.
The elimination effort is already underway, with 132 of the retailer’s California stores already free of single-use plastic bags. The grocer is going to do away with the bags starting next month at its stores in five states: Nevada, Utah, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia.
Sprouts said the changes are aimed at more closely aligning the company’s operations with its sustainability goals and reputation for being planet-friendly.

Dive Insight:

Sprouts said its commitment to do away with single-use plastic bags will remove over 200 million of the bags from circulation each year.

“Our customers tell us how much they appreciate Sprouts’ care for the planet and our commitment to doing what’s right for our collective future,” Nick Konat, president and chief operating officer of Sprouts, said in the announcement. “The decision to shift to reusable bags is one of many ways Sprouts will have an even bigger impact on the environment.”

In its 2021 ESG report, Sprouts said that 39% of its stores do not give out single-use plastic bags and that customers used 11 million reusable bags at checkout that year.

Sprouts said in the press release it decided to stop offering paper bags because they “are generally not reusable, often are not recycled (with 80% ending up in landfill) and have a high environmental cost in terms of water, energy and raw materials used in their manufacture.”

Sprouts has approximately 380 stores across 23 states.

In lieu of single-use plastic bags, Sprouts will offer its customers “stronger, reusable plastic bags” made from 40% post-consumer recycled material for 10 cents each. These reusable bags can be reused at least 125 times, the grocer said.

Sprouts will keep encouraging customers to bring their own reusable bags.

“We like to remind customers that any bag takes energy and resources to produce, which means the most sustainable choice is the bag you already have,” Konat said. “Making the effort to reuse any bag that comes into your possession, and disposing of the bag responsibly, is key.”

Customers who have single-use plastic bags can keep bringing them to Sprouts stores for recycling, the announcement said, noting that the grocer recycled nearly 1 million pounds of soft plastics brought in by customers in 2022.

“We understand this will be an adjustment for our customers, and we will be here to help them with the transition,” Konat said.

Sprouts is in the company of several other grocers, including Kroger and Giant Eagle, that have pledged to do away with single-use plastic bags. Last April, Aldi US announced it would do away with plastic shopping bags in its stores by the end of this year. Wegmans stopped offering single-use plastic bags chainwide last year.

In 2020, major retailers, including Target, CVS Health, Walmart and Kroger, joined in to ramp up the development of viable plastic bag alternatives, spearheading a three-year project called the Beyond the Bag Initiative. Since then, Target, Walmart and CVS Health have tested multiple models that resulted from that initiative.

The efforts by retailers come at a time when a growing number of states and localities have banned single-use plastic bags. New Jersey’s single-use plastic and paper bag ban went into effect last May. NJ.com reported that state’s plastic bag ban eliminated 4.8 billion plastic bags and 95.9 million paper bags from the waste stream from May to December 2022, per findings from the NJ Food Council, which represents grocers and convenience stores.

Some grocers have turned to reusable bags as an incremental sales and marketing opportunity by creating their own lines of branded bags.

Bags at checkout aren’t the only bags for grocers to tackle. In 2025, a California law will go into effect banning grocery stores from providing single-use, non-compostable bags to shoppers before they check out. This makes California the first state to ban plastic produce bags. Sprouts already sells reusable bulk and produce bags.