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Sainsbury's help customers break their 'bag' habit

October 1, 2008

• Sainsbury's announces its success in bag reduction and launches a text service to boost re-use

Sainsbury's is launching a groundbreaking text reminder service to encourage customers to take their carrier bags with them when they go shopping, as 58% of shoppers still say the biggest barrier for not re-using bags is they forget to take them shopping and need a reminder*.

From 1st October 2008, customers can sign up to receive a weekly text reminder to take bags on their chosen day of shopping. Once a time and day is agreed, Sainsbury's will send a free weekly text reminder to customers ahead of their shopping with a prompt to take their bags.

Sainsbury's will also be removing free carrier bags from check-outs in all its stores (excluding convenience) from today. The bags will still be available but hidden from sight at the tills. Re-usable ‘Bag for Life' sales have increased by 63% in the last year and Sainsbury's anticipate a further substantial increase due to their latest plans.

Less than six months since pledging to halve the number of free one-use disposable plastic bags used by its customers by April 2009, Sainsbury's is already over half way to achieving this target. The use of free carrier bags at Sainsbury's has been slashed by 28% since April this year, achieved through a number of in-store trials.

Sainsbury's believes a number of different initiatives are required to bring about a change in consumer behaviour and is finding actions to engage customers in Reducing the number of bags they use, Re-using the bags they have and Recycling bags that are no longer fit for purpose.

Justin King, chief executive, Sainsbury's, said:" It's extremely positive that so many of our customers have reduced their use of free carrier bags in a matter of months. The results clearly show that customers respond to being rewarded and reminded for re-using their bags, and we continue to believe that charging for single-use bags is not the only answer to achieving lasting benefits for the environment.

"Instead, we want to make it easier for customers to be less reliant on free carrier bags and prompt positive behaviour change. We are over half way to reducing bag usage by 50% by April 2009, and we hope our new texting service will drive change in a practical way that helps customers change their bag usage habits."

Dr Aric Sigman, psychologist, said: "Using new carrier bags is considered a relatively ‘simple', ‘superficial' habit. Giving up a dependency on new carrier bags is not the same as giving up chocolate in that the main obstacle is to simply remember to re-use our carrier bags.

We're not denying ourselves something that we crave, we just do things one way as opposed to the other. In fact, we used to re-use our carrier bags until we were offered new bags each time we shopped, which simply created a take-for-granted habit, which should therefore be easy enough to break. So a three-month ‘re-education' period is the optimum time to re-programme our minds and shed our excess habitual baggage."

Editor's Notes:

Text Message Mechanism:

• To help you remember to bring your bags when you go shopping, text 63838* with the specific day and time you'd like your weekly text reminder (e.g. Saturday 11am or Thursday 2pm).
• You'll get a confirmation text with the day and time that you've requested your text reminder to be sent each week. You'll then receive one text message per week at that time until 31 December 2008.
• If at any point you want to stop or change the day and time for the text reminders, just text ‘STOP' to 63838*. You will then need to sign up again by texting 63838* with your new day and time.

1. Reduce

Target to reduce plastic bag usage by 50%
This announcement is in addition to an existing Sainsbury’s commitment to halve the environmental impact of its single-use carrier bags by April 2009. Since making this commitment, WRAP data demonstrates that Sainsbury’s has achieved the largest reduction of plastic in its bags, reducing the environmental impact by 40%. This has resulted in a 6,500 tonne reduction in the use of virgin plastic every year.

Nectar reward point
Sainsbury’s pioneered rewarding customers for reusing their bags in 1991 with its ‘Pennyback scheme’. Interest in carrier bags has shifted significantly since then, and in June 2008, Sainsbury’s introduced the Nectar reward scheme for customers re-using their bags.

2. Reuse

Sainsbury’s Reusable Bags
Sainsbury's launched its first ‘Make The Difference’ Day in April 2007, giving out free ‘bags for life’ to all its customers instead of free disposable carrier bags. Following a further two ‘Make The Difference’ Days over the year, Sainsbury’s issued a total of 15 million free ‘bags for life’ to help its customers break the habit of using disposable bags. Sainsbury’s recent research shows that nearly 50% of Sainsbury’s customers continue to say that a ‘Bag for Life’ is the best way to influence the impact of plastic bags on the environment. Sainsbury's pioneered re-usable bags in 2002, and now offers the widest range of re-usable bags:

3. Recycle

Target for plastic bags to use 50% recycled content by June 2008
Sainsbury's is still the only major retailer to have taken action to reduce the amount of plastic used in the manufacture of bags.  Today it announces its bags, currently made using 50% recycled content and 10% chalk will, by June, use 50% recycled content and 10% chalk. 

Sainsbury's offers recycling facilities to customers in each of its 490 main stores for bags that are no longer needed or usable.

4. Last year a large number of retailers, not just supermarkets, sat down with WRAP, the Government funded body concerned with packaging and food waste, and DEFRA, to agree a voluntary approach to cutting the environmental impact of plastic bags by 25% by the end of 2008 - not simply the number of bags.  At a WRAP conference in March this year, data revealed that Sainsbury’s had achieved the largest reduction of plastic in its bags: to date, its overall environmental impact has reduced by 40% versus an average reduction of 14% by other retailers. (This set against the target that the industry agreed – through the BRC – with the Government of 25% by the end of 2008).

* Findings from Netmums, based on 1,000 respondents, online poll, September 2008 

Answer Text	Votes	%	% in bar graph form
I forget to take my own re-usable bags with me	591	58%
I don't. I always use a bag for life	332	33%
I don't have enough used shopping bags for my shopping trip	39	4%
The plastic bags are available for free, so I might as well use them	30	3%
It's not an important issue for me	14	1%
I'm not prepared to pay for a bag for life/reusable bags	12	1%
	1018

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