Whole Foods Goes in Right Direction But Trips and Falls

Whole Foods will eliminate free plastic bags from their checkout lines by Earth Day. Instead of giving out those backs that end up blown around on the street, in parks, and wherever the storm-water goes, they will give out only “100% recycled” brown paper bags.

I like the effort, but if they were really serious about it they would charge customers for each bag like Ikea does. Ikea charges $.05, although I like $.25 myself (I think it is a better incentive). Whole Foods is still not getting around the fact that a free resource will be consumed above its social cost.

Additionally, the new paper bags are called 100% recycled, with no mention of post-consumer content. PCC is the ONLY thing important. It signifies that this paper has been recycled instead of thrown away. The percent of recycled content is often arbitrary and sometimes necessary for industrial paper production, ie. certain papers must be “recycled” in their processing, and are “recycled” without ever leaving the factory. Always look for the post consumer content on the label, not recycled content.