Plastic Bags Survey: Incentives Could Increase Reusable Bags

Today is International Plastic Bag Free Day. Plastic bags are still incredibly prominent even though reusable grocery and shopping bags have increased in popularity in recent years. How many consumers regularly use reusable shopping bags instead of plastic bags? And how many are likely to do so in the future?

Reusable Bags

In Ask Your Target Market’s latest survey, 21% of respondents said they always use reusable grocery bags instead of plastic bags when shopping. 44% said they sometimes use reusable bags instead of plastic. 16% rarely ever use reusable bags. And 21% never use them. Of those who regularly use reusable shopping bags, most seem to get them from the same grocery stores where they actually use them. The most popular brands of reusable shopping bags include Walmart, Aldi, Trader Joe’s and Meijer.

Plastic Bags

But even though plastic bags are bad for the environment when they’re simply thrown away, it seems that many have been able to find other uses for their plastic shopping bags. 76% of shoppers said they usually reuse their plastic shopping bags in some way after bringing them home. 30% said they recycle their plastic bags. And just 8% throw them away.

Providing Incentive

Some stores have even begun incentivizing reusable bags, since the lack of plastic bags is better both for the environment and for the stores who have to provide those bags to shoppers. And it’s a technique that might be effective if more stores start catching on. Of those who don’t use reusable bags very often, 55% said they would be likely to do so if their grocery store offered some kind of incentive, like a discount or cash back.You can view the complete survey results in the widget below and be sure to click “Open Full Report” to take advantage of all the chart and filter options.Photo Credit: plasic bag nightmare 001What do you want to know? If you need some consumer insights on a particular topic, let us know in the comments below and we’ll consider it for an upcoming survey post.

Results were collected on July 2 via AYTM’s online survey panel.