Today, Closed Loop Partners’ Center for the Circular Economy and its
Consortium to Reinvent the Retail
Bag release a new
playbook to provide near-term reductions in single-use plastic bags that can
be implemented by any retailer — from local stores to national brands. The
resource highlights effective solutions to reduce the number of bags needed
by retailers and encourage the use of reusable bags customers already have
at home. Key insights from the playbook are based on research, interviews,
surveys and learnings from 17 of the world’s leading retailers across four
key categories: communications, employee training, bag and fixture design,
and customer incentives.
The playbook highlights 25 strategies across these four categories that
cater to retailers at different stages of their journey. These strategies
include detailed guidance on how best to prompt customers to bring their own
bags, where to place reusable bags, items retailers can skip bagging, which
customer incentives can be deployed and other strategies.
The playbook insights are the product of a first-of-its-kind collaboration
among Closed Loop Partners and many of the world's leading retailers —
including 14 retail partners in the Consortium to Reinvent the Retail Bag
and three external retailers. Experts from Closed Loop Partners led the
creation of the playbook, supported by retail consultancy
McMillanDoolittle — which performed quantitative and qualitative surveys
and deep-dive interviews with retailers, supplemented with secondary
research and analysis.
Reducing the number of single-use bags used in retail can make a tremendous
difference. Even a 1 percent bag reduction has a significant impact on our
global waste footprint — in the US, that is equivalent to 1 billion
fewer bags used and discarded. Beyond driving progress toward sustainability
goals, using fewer single-use bags can also help retailers reduce costs,
engage employees, support customers, and build brand reputation and loyalty.
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Join us at SB'24 San Diego as Victor Casale — co-founder of Pact Collective and co-founder and CEO of MOB Beauty — shares insights from ongoing collaborations with materials innovators to create fully compostable, refillable, plastic-free, and easier-to-recycle packaging alternatives for beauty and wellness products.
“Our new playbook walks retailers through strategies they can implement
today to get teams and customers on board with reducing single-use bags in
stores and encourage shoppers to reuse their own bags,” said Kate
Daly, Managing Director of the Center
for the Circular Economy at Closed Loop Partners. “This tool is for
retailers who are looking for quick wins and those seeking innovative, new
approaches. We hope these insights serve as an inspiration to retailers
looking to reduce their plastic footprint and deploy bag reduction
solutions.”
The Consortium to Reinvent the Retail Bag has been working to reimagine the
retail bag in the store and across emerging channels such as local delivery
since its launch in
2020
with CVS Health, Target, Walmart, Kroger and Walgreens.
Since then, the initiative has grown from five retail partners to 15 and
deployed more than 6,000 iterative tests, surveys and
pilots
across markets to help accelerate the development of sustainable bag
solutions; in 2021, nine winners were
chosen
across three categories: reuse and refill, enabling technology, and
innovative materials. This year, the Consortium will go back into market on
a larger scale, testing complementary strategies to reduce single-use bags.
This Spring, Consortium partners (which now also include Ahold Delhaize
USA Brands, Albertsons Companies, DICK’S Sporting Goods, Dollar
General, H-E-B, Hy-Vee, Meijer, The TJX Companies, Ulta
Beauty and Wakefern Food Corp) will test multiple strategies from the
Playbook simultaneously in two cities in Arizona and Colorado —
launching signage, marketing and customer prompts across stores. The goal of
these tests is to enable a broader cultural shift towards customers bringing
their own reusable bags from home. The Consortium is inviting other
retailers — from mom-and-pop shops to large brands — to join and test the
same prompts, signage and marketing materials in order to have the broadest
reach with customers and to create ecosystem-wide impact.
Meanwhile, in New Jersey, where there is legislation banning single-use
bags in certain stores, the Consortium will test a returnable bag service
model — such as those offered by Challenge winners
ChicoBag,
Goatote and Returnity —
in which customers are borrowing a bag onsite (or after shopping online) and
reusing it before eventually returning it at the same or different
retailer’s store to be washed, redistributed and reused — a solution for
when customers forget to bring their own reusable bags.
Interested retailers are encouraged to email
[email protected]
to inquire about joining the Consortium to Reinvent the Retail Bag; to gain
access to useful research, insights and continued in-market experimentation;
and to potentially participate in the pilots in Arizona and Colorado.
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Sustainable Brands Staff
Published Mar 14, 2023 8am EDT / 5am PDT / 12pm GMT / 1pm CET