German stores are abandoning plastic and even paper bags, replacing them with shopping totes
The owners of the Aldi discount chain decided to go further: by the end of 2018, they plan to abandon both plastic and disposable paper bags. True, not all at once, but gradually, training customers to bring their own cloth bags for shopping.
As Deutsche Welle notes, in 2016 the average German used 45 bags. That is not so few: in Ireland, for example, each resident uses an average of only 16 bags. True, two years ago in Germany, 70 bags were used per year. Then their cost was much lower, and in many stores they were given free.
Due to the great harm to the environment, since 2015 the European Union has begun to fight plastic, and now EU member states are obliged to reduce the use of plastic bags. In Germany, 60 percent of such bags must be paid for or replaced with more environmentally friendly options. Over 350 German companies have already voluntarily taken this step.
But not all representatives of retail trade were happy with this decision: after all, they are losing one of the cheapest and simplest forms of advertising. And obliging, for example, buyers of expensive clothes or luxury goods to pay extra for a bag or not to pack the goods at all is unthinkable.
But a solution was quickly found: many supermarkets and shopping centers released cloth bags with their own logos, which now lie at the checkout. Some of them still left disposable bags but raised their price. In the Media Markt and Saturn chains, for example, depending on the size, such bags cost from 5 to 50 euro cents; in the clothing store C&A, 20 cents. And, say, the German manufacturer of sportswear and footwear Adidas, not only in Germany but also in branches around the world, packs purchases exclusively in paper bags.
In Frankfurt am Main, on one of the city's shopping streets, Bergerstrasse, many stores have completely abandoned plastic and cardboard bags. As an alternative, they released five thousand string bags and distributed them free on the street and in shopping centers.
Giving up plastic bags will not be an unpleasant event for German consumers: according to the latest survey by the sociological service YouGov, already today two-thirds of German residents go shopping with a canvas bag, backpack, or basket. Only 12 percent use bags – but they do not buy them at the checkout, but bring an already used bag. At the same time, every eighth German surveyed never uses plastic bags at all.
Canvas bags have long become an indispensable accessory for European youth. With such a bag, one is not ashamed to appear in public, which even glamorous German top models do.