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Life

12th Jun 2019

This shop is using embarrassing plastic bags to shame customers into bringing reusable ones

Alan Loughnane

A brilliant idea.

A grocery shop in Vancouver has gone to great lengths in designing plastic bags with embarrassing slogans to discourage its customers from using single-use plastics.

Customers who don’t bring their own bags to the East West Market in Vancouver will instead have to carry their grocery home in bags reading “Wart Ointment Wholesale” or “Into the Weird Adult Video Emporium”.

The independent store which sells local food only are hoping the move will encourage people to bring reusable bags with them while shopping.

A video on the store’s social media site explained that 1,000,000 plastic bags are used every minute, but that most are filled only once.

The store said it not only wants to encourage its customers to bring their own reusable bags but it also wants to start a dialogue around single use plastics.

Unfortunately, while the idea is brilliant, it’s backfiring. They’ve made the bags too good and now a lot of people want to collect a set of them.

It was announced this week that Canada is banning single-use plastics by the year 2021, including grocery bags, plastic cutlery and straws.