California’s plastic bag ban is back. Where must you pay, where can you bring your own?
California’s single-use plastic bag ban is back, but Sacramento-area supermarkets’ rules on personal shopping totes remain a mixed bag for now.
Some stores – think Costco and Smart & Final – allow customers to bring in bags and pack their own groceries.
Other grocers ask that shoppers buy a new bag at checkout or keep their personal bags in their car and pack their goods in the parking lot.
At Raley’s, stores are allowing reusable bags in stores in counties that allow them, said spokesman Kevin Buffalino. But he added that store employees will not handle the bags. The checkers will place groceries back into the shopper’s cart for them to pack on their own.
“There are some counties that have banned reusable bags, and in those counties, we are following the local ordinances and not allowing them to be brought into those stores,” Buffalino said via email.
But Sacramento County has green-lighted personal shopping bags even as grocers determine what’s best for their customers and employees.
Sacramento County health officials lifted the ban on personal reusable shopping bags June 29, a week after Gov. Gavin Newsom’s temporary two-month lifting of the state’s ban on plastic carryout shopping bags expired.
“Yes, the information in the county’s health order is still in effect,” Sacramento County spokeswoman Brenda Bongiorno said Wednesday. “People in Sacramento County can use their own reusable bags to shop.”
Newsom lifted the state’s carryout bag ban in April for 60 days during the early stages of California’s pandemic crisis. The move was designed to allow grocers to devise new safety procedures for shoppers and store workers, said officials at CalRecycle.
Though the statewide carryout plastic bag ban never affected personal reusable bags, each retailer has a different approach to the reusable bags.
At Nugget Markets, grocery checkers will allow new reusables bought during a transaction. If you want to use your reusable bags, keep them in the car. The checker will put the groceries back in your cart and you can bag them at the car.
Costco? Unless local rules state otherwise, members of the warehouse store chain can use their own reusable shopping bags as long as they fill the bags themselves.
Same at Save Mart, say store employees. Shoppers can bring in their tote, but are responsible for packing their own groceries.
Checkers at Smart & Final won’t handle your reusable bag. But if county health officials say reusables are allowed, and as long as customers clean their bags before and after each use, they can bring them inside and bag their own items at checkout, according to the company’s website.
Sacramento County shoppers can use their own reusable bags to shop, but area consumers have been reluctant.
“The public is slow to come back to reusables,” said Mark Murray of recycling advocates Californians Against Waste, based in Sacramento.
The nation’s first statewide ban was hailed by environmental advocates and public officials as a way to keep the stuff off roadsides and beaches and out of landfills. Cities and counties already had some sort of bag ordinances in place even before California voters passed the ban in 2016.
Shoppers quickly embraced bringing their own bags. Six months after the statewide ban went into effect, customers brought their own bags to the store 86% of the time and didn’t buy a store-furnished paper or reusable at checkout, according to a CalRecycle study.
But the coronavirus pandemic has dramatically changed consumers’ habits and how grocers and other retailers cater to them.
The virus’ rapid spread led to a reusable bag ban just as the personal bags’ popularity among consumers continued to grow, Murray said.
Amid the rising COVID-19 cases, the lockdowns, rollbacks and watch lists, consumers are wary to pull their bags out of storage, Murray said.
Murray on Wednesday said getting shoppers back on the reusable track was an “education issue.”
“The public shouldn’t fear reusable bags. Reusable bags are a safe choice. We want them to go back to the fantastic job they were doing last year and early this year” before the pandemic took hold, Murray said. “In this category, we can get back to normal.”
This story was originally published July 30, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
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