Recycling – The New Retail Price Increase

By | 2010-07-14

So what’s more annoying these days in retail (other than poor customer service) than being charged 5 cents per bag for saving the environment.  That’s just total utter crap!  A large building supply chain started this in Winnipeg last year, with the excuse from the store employees, “Well the other chain is doing it!”  And now the large drug stores are doing it as well.  You know who these stores are.  They claim it’s to encourage recycling and be environmentally friendly.  BS!  Cheap retail bags typically cost large retailers less than a cent.  That used to come out of their cost of doing business.  Now they charge 5 cents a bag, and as far as I know, they keep the money.  Where do they claim they are passing this 4.x cents on to any environmental program to save the planet?  Instead, prices stay the same and they add clear profit to their bottom line.  I’m sure that 4 cents adds up.  It’s a complete scam based on traditional and honest business practice.  Bags were invented to encourage people to buy more product and was a lost leader.  Now they found a way to profit from it as well.  

These aren’t the budget stores that charged for bags for honest reasons from day one, for economical reasons.  These are higher than average profit stores that are hiding behind the “recycle” buzz.  And their claim to be doing so without publicly posting their donations to the environmental causes is simply wrong.

How long before they add a coin slot to the hand sanitizer pump at the doors?  Shortly after they read this if they aren’t already planning it.

At some point this will back fire on these retailers, the same way that coin slots in washroom stalls did years ago.  When the sheep in this world start to openly complain and even shop elsewhere.  Prove to me “the shopper” that you are donating these “recycle” profits to a just environmental cause, or just be honest why you are charging for bags.

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