Some shoppers have figured a way around Delaware’s plastic bag ban.
Instead of bringing their own bags to the store, they are stealing the stores’ plastic shopping baskets.
Kaitlyn DiFrancesco, a cashier and manager at the Acme in University Plaza near Christiana, said her store had so many baskets stolen that they were completely wiped out of their supply.
“We don’t have any more,” she said. “Actually, because of people stealing them, we aren’t going to order more.”
The Acme location noticed people stealing the baskets immediately after the bag ban went into effect last month. Store employees were advised to ask customers to return the baskets if they were seen leaving with them, but some just ignored these requests or slipped out undetected, DiFrancesco said.
Although Acme in University Plaza will no longer supply shopping baskets, customers can still purchase reusable fabric bags or pay 5 cents for paper bags at checkout, which are mostly used for grocery delivery services.
On July 1, retail stores in Delaware were no longer allowed to provide any type of plastic carryout bags for customers.
This bag ban comes as an amendment to Delaware’s original plastic bag ban that went into effect last year and allowed plastic bags with a 2.25-millimeter thickness to be deemed reusable. Businesses with smaller footprints had exceptions to this rule.
Now, single-use plastic carryout bags are allowed only at restaurants, which are not required to have an in-store recycling program. All other retailers, regardless of size, are prohibited from distributing any plastic carryout bags.
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Some retailers opted to provide paper bags for free or for a small fee or sell reusable fabric bags. Many quickly noticed their supply of plastic shopping baskets was rapidly dwindling.
In New Jersey, several supermarkets such as ShopRite, Whole Foods, Acme and Stop and Shop experienced similar struggles with plastic shopping baskets disappearing after the statewide ban there on single-use plastic bags went into effect on May 4.
New Jersey’s bag ban was signed into law in November 2020 and gave retailers 18 months to prepare for the switch.
Wyoming, Connecticut and Oregon are among the other states that have seen plastic shopping baskets stolen after plastic bag bans went into effect.
At Food Lion in Fairfield Shopping Center on New London Road in Newark, the store removed the shopping baskets from the store when Delaware’s initial bag ban was implemented last year.
“Way back at the beginning of everything, we switched to paper bags and we don’t charge for paper bags like some other stores do,” said Christopher Harper, customer service manager at the Fairfield Food Lion.
Despite some retailers having gripes about the bag ban and its impact on customers, Harper says his Acme location has no complaints about the July 1 ban.
“If anything, it costs us less because we don’t have to buy plastic anymore,” he said.
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