Store owners say plastic bag ban causes more shoplifting

Seattle Press-Intelligencer: the bag ban is contributing to thousands of dollars in losses for at least one Seattle grocery store, and questions have been raised about the risk of food-borne illness from reusable bags that shoppers don't often wash.

Mike Duke, who operates the Lake City Grocery Outlet with his wife, said that since the plastic-bag ban started last July, he's lost at least $5,000 in produce and between $3,000 and $4,000 in frozen food.

"We've never lost that much before," said Duke, who found those numbers through inventories of stolen and damaged goods.

The Dukes opened the Lake City grocery store in June 2011, and Mike Duke said in the year before the plastic-bag ban losses in frozen food and produce were a small fraction of what he's seeing now. As he explained to seattlepi.com and also the North Seattle Chamber of Commerce, the shoplifters' patterns are difficult to detect.

They enter the store with reusable bags and can more easily conceal items they steal. The reusable bags require staff to watch much more closely, and even though the store has a loss-prevention officer and more than a dozen security cameras, it's tough to tell what a customer has paid for and what they may already have brought with them.

According to data released in January by Seattle Public Utilities, 21.1 percent of business owners surveyed said increased shoplifting because of the plastic bag ban was a problem. Results of another survey released in January – one done by an environmental advocacy group that found the ban "popular and successful" – (naturally) didn't mention the problem of shoplifting.

read … Wisdom

Hawaii Co Bag Ban Murders 2400 Trees Per Year

WHT: A full 80 percent of shoppers were observed using reusable shopping bags in staff surveys of shoppers at grocery stores and big box retailers in both West and East Hawaii in the month since the county ban went into effect, said Recycling Coordinator Linda Peters. That compares to 13 percent before the bag ban went into effect….

Reusable bags, including plastic ones that are at least 3 mils (thousandth of an inch) thick, and paper bags are allowed….

Hawaii Island grocery retailer KTA took the bag ban a step further, charging for both paper and plastic bags as it depletes its inventory. On the Big Island alone, more than 723 tons of paper grocery bags are used each year, according to KTA. The production of those paper bags contributes to air pollution and would require 12,000 trees to be cut down.

(So they are murdering 20% of 12000 which is 2400 trees/year and this is a ‘success’?)

read … Tree Huggers Become Tree Choppers