Whole Foods to Stop Offering Plastic Bags

A friend of mine forwarded me this article by the New York Times which indicates that Whole Foods (where I just picked up some stuff today, in fact) will stop offering plastic bags to their customers by Earth Day, April 22, 2008.

From the article:

The Whole Foods Market chain said Tuesday that it would stop offering plastic grocery bags, giving customers instead a choice between recycled paper or reusable bags.

A rising number of governments and retailers are banning plastic bags, or discouraging their use, because of concerns about their environmental impact. San Francisco banned plastic bags last year unless they are of a type that breaks down easily. China announced a crackdown on plastic bags a few weeks ago, while other governments, including New York City’s, are making sure retailers offer plastic bag recycling.

The rest of the article is here.

For me, this is great news. Plastic bags are notoriously difficult to recycle, and although many supermarkets will take them back for recycling, not enough communities actually have recycling facilities for these types of bags, which means that many of them (despite our best intentions) don't actually GET recycled. So go Whole Foods!

I just hope that this will entice people to bring their own bags more often.