Giant Eagle’s Erie stores to stop providing single-use plastic bags
Huge Eagle will celebrate Earth Working day by no lengthier giving single-use plastic baggage at its Erie County supermarkets.
Commencing April 22, clients will have a decision in between getting their very own luggage to Large Eagle or getting paper bags for 10 cents just about every. Paper luggage will be presented at no price to buyers who pay back with govt-funded assistance applications.
“We really feel this is 1 of the very best approaches we can enable give back again to the communities we serve,” Huge Eagle spokesman Dan Donovan said. “Single-use plastic baggage are one of the most noticeable waste solutions.”
Grocery chains have been removing single-use plastic luggage in other states for yrs but the Pennsylvania legislature, until eventually just lately, prevented such bans in the condition. Lawmakers allowed a two-year-old prohibition on this sort of bans to expire in late 2021.
Large Eagle experienced removed solitary-use plastic bags at its Cuyahoga County, Ohio, retailers in January 2020 but brought them again two months afterwards when the COVID-19 pandemic triggered retailers to temporarily quit accepting reusable bags.
“In the slide of 2021 we commenced making it possible for reusable bags once more across all of our shops,” Donovan claimed. “Now we are bringing back again the elimination of one-use plastic baggage. We preferred to commence in Cuyhoga County because the reaction had been so great when it began. We also preferred a different community with no record of this. We imagined Erie would be a fantastic location for that.”
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Customers will be permitted to bring all sorts of luggage to reuse, including paper and plastic, Donovan mentioned.
Two of Erie’s other grocery store chains, Wegmans and Tops Markets, have no options to eradicate one-use plastic bags at their Erie outlets at this time, although they have taken off them from other stories.
Wegmans has removed plastic luggage at some of its outlets in Virginia and New York State, though Tops Markets has eradicated them at its outlets in Vermont and New York Point out.
“At this time, we are not phasing out our plastic baggage in our Pennsylvania retailers as the municipalities our stores are in do not now have a plastic bag ban,” Tops Market spokeswoman Kathleen Sautter claimed in an e mail. “We will continue to abide by mandates intently and comply with what ever regulations are set in location appropriately.”
Neither Erie nor Millcreek Township has a ban on single-use plastic bags. Pittsburgh is looking at these kinds of a ban.
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Giant Eagle clients who have the supermarket’s Benefit Card and bring reusable bags will be entered into sweepstakes every thirty day period to win $10,000. Shops will also have reusable bags for sale at 99 cents every single, while Huge Eagle is partnering with Second Harvest Foodstuff Bank to give 5,000 reusable luggage for totally free to shoppers of require.
Big Eagle programs to get rid of single-use plastic baggage at all of its supermarkets, but not right up until late summertime at the earliest, Donovan stated.
Contact David Bruce at [email protected] Abide by him on Twitter @ETNBruce.