Whole Foods Ends Reusable Bag Credit After 17 Years, Leaving Shoppers Frustrated

It’s been 17 years since Whole Foods implemented its reusable bag credit for customers. Now that promotion of nearly two decades will come to an end, and some shoppers aren’t happy.

The grocery chain confirmed to Retail Dive that this policy will no longer be in effect. The bag credit was initially established in 2008 as a way to encourage sustainability by the company.

The idea was for customers to utilize reusable bags. If they did so, customers were given a 10-cent credit for each bag tacked onto their final receipt.

Now that many retailers are on board with reusable grocery bags, Whole Foods has chosen to step back from this incentive. The company believes its goal has been achieved. Subsequently, Target, CVS, ALDI, and Walmart have also introduced initiatives in recent years to cut back on or eliminate the use of single-use plastic bags.

However, some fans of the grocery retailer are not happy with the change. In a Facebook post, frustrated shoppers shared their anger toward the company and its owner Jeff Bezos for the switch.

“He [Jeff Bezos] also got rid of the 10% of buying products in bulk! I try to limit my shopping there and shop at Wegmans,” wrote one Facebook user. A second noted, “I just went there about an hour ago and was looking for the button.”

“I’ve boycotted them for over a year which is sad because they were an early adopter for others to follow,” claimed a third shopper. A fourth stated, “Whole Foods started the discount, Amazon stopped it. What a joke. The boycott starts now! (I’ve already boycotted Amazon but WF was a harder one to get rid of).”

Whole Foods’ Bag Refund Policy Was Considered Revolutionary in 2008

Per a February 2008 story published by On Milwaukee, Whole Foods was the first U.S. grocery chain to completely eliminate plastic grocery bags from checkout lines in all of its 270 stores. The company was very proud of its initiative upon its debut.

“Whole Foods Market believes that taking care of the environment is everyone’s responsibility,” said Whole Foods’ Midwest representative Kate Klotz at the time. “As the Environmental Protection Agency’s green power partner of the year the last two years, we intend to lead by example. This includes the green elements that each of our new stores have, the fact that our Midwest distribution trucks run on biodiesel fuel, and that we needed to set an example in terms of corporate plastic use.”

“One hundred billion bags are put into the environment each year, with only an estimated six percent recycled,” Klotz says. “We anticipate that we’ll save 100 million bags … from April 22 until the end of 2008.”

Whole Foods’ original initiative aligned with the company’s broader sustainability efforts and eco-friendly brand image. The retailer has yet to confirm why it has ended its longstanding reusable bag credit policy.