Food basics will no longer provide customers with plastic bags as of Monday, October 17th. This is a part of METRO’s objective 2022-2026 Corporate Responsibility Plan to reduce overpackaging and single-use plastic.
Food Basics is a part of METRO Inc. and is the closest located shop to Fanshawe College.
“People recently, including me and my mum, would just bring our own bags, because we have to pay for plastic bags anyways. I think that’s a waste,”
Coraline, one of the store’s customers
Previously, Food Basics has been offering plastic packaging for five cents each.
According to Marie-Claude Bacon, Vice President of Public Affairs and Communications office “the elimination of single-use plastic shopping bags will prevent the circulation of more than 330 million of these bags annually”.
“A bag is a minimal use of plastic, but mostly plastic is used in food packaging. They should focus on banning that first,”
Arjun, another customer that has just shopped for the first time without plastic bags
In 2021 Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault published draft regulations outlining how Canada will ban the manufacture, sale and import of plastic grocery bags by the end of 2022.
“I do not have a problem with plastic bags being banned, I can carry my own. The only problem is that I didn’t hear about it before today,”
adds Arjun
This decision hasn’t impacted the customers flow. Shoppers can still purchase the reusable bags from the store, or use the ones they brought from home.
Earlier this year Walmart stopped providing single-use plastic shopping bags to customers in Ontario.
Comments