Shop Talk
Retailers, consumers and prices
Target uses “People” to get people to go green
We’ve all seen stores touting reusable shopping bags. They’re a trendy way to ditch those regular plastic bags and they’re often pretty cheap — 99 cents at Target and some supermarkets, 50 cents at Wal-Mart and sometimes they’re even free.
Now, Target is taking the reusable tote idea to a new medium. The discount chain took out ads on the inside front cover and the back cover of the latest issue of People touting green ideas. The most intriguing one if you’re in the market for one of those bags is to use the cover as an envelope, send in five plastic Target bags and get a coupon for a free Target tote.
Readers don’t even have to pay for the stamp — Target and TerraCycle, the company that made the “Retote” bag, already paid the postage.
On the back of the magazine, Target pointed out ways to go green and save green at its stores, such as buying its Archer Farms organic fruit snacks. To show how earth-friendly it has become, Target even shows off a gift card made from a corn-based material that’s biodegradable in a backyard compost. Just make sure you spend the moolah on that card before you throw it out to pasture.
(Reuters photo)
U.S. shoppers ready to ban the plastic bag
As California goes, so goes the nation — or at least that appears to be the case when we’re talking about San Francisco and the increasingly out-of-favor plastic shopping bag.
San Francisco became the first and only U.S. city to ban the bags in April 2008. Now it seems that the rest of the country is also ready to outlaw the offending carry-alls, which environmentalists say endanger wildlife and can take up to 1,000 years to decompose.
More than half, 54 percent, of Americans believe that plastic, non-compostable shopping bags should be banned, according Deloitte’s Retail “Green” Survey.
That survey of 1,080 Americans, also found that nearly one-third say they take reusable shopping bags to food stores.
Scores of other countries from Bangladesh to China have already banned the bags.
-
Resident Shop Talk Expert
-
