IKEA announced last week that it will charge customers a nickel for every plastic bag they use to carry their Svalka glasses and Bibbi Snurr blankets home in.
Beginning March 15, IKEA stores in the US, including Burbank's, will implement the per bag fee. All proceeds will go to American Forests to restore forests and offset CO2 emissions. This organization is one of the oldest conservation groups in the country, and has, among it's many environmental programs, a cool Famous & Historic Trees nursery that propagates and sells seedlings from trees connected to famous people, events, and places. You can plant a descendant of a Red Maple from Walden Pond, or the Live Oak that Martin Luther King, Jr. rested under while marching from Selma to Mongomery, in your own yard.
To further encourage customers to change their bag habits, IKEA will start selling its reusable "Big Blue Bag" for only 59 cents, reduced from 99 cents. You can fit a lot of placemats and magazine files in one of those. While also made of plastic, they are durable, strong and roomy. One will replace hundreds of single-use bags, if you remember to bring it along when you shop (tip -- once emptied, hang it on your front doorknob so you'll see it when you go out again).
IKEA is a business known for its green principles. It promotes healthy forestry practices by using only wood from well managed forests in their manufacturing, not from intact, natural or old-growth forests. It has a Plant-A-Tree Cool the Globe program, through which IKEA is trying to offset the CO2 emitted from customer and employee cars traveling to and from stores. To do this, IKEA plants about 33,100 trees each year through its partnership with American Forests.
IKEA's U.S. stores went through 70 million plastic bags last year. Officials want to cut that in half over the first year of the "bring your own bag" policy. If that happens, Pernille Lopez, president of IKEA North America said the per bag fees would add up to about 1.5 million trees being planted, an idea that got a favorable response from customers IKEA surveyed,
I saw the prominent signs announcing the new fee at the Burbank store last week. When I asked a checker about it, she said most people thought it was a good idea but a few have threatened to refuse to pay.
The Swedish company's intention is to essentially eliminate the use of plastic bags. They implemented a bag fee in June 2006 across the UK, and the company anticipates a 90 percent drop in disposable bag use within the first year there.
The average family of four uses 1,500 plastic shopping bags a year," said Mona Astra Liss, spokeswoman for the 29 American IKEA stores. "We are trying to reach out to our customers and the public at large to make them aware of the amount of plastic waste going on."
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, Americans use more than 380 billion plastic bags a year.
