Shoppers in New Jersey this summer might notice something different at their local CVS and Target stores—a kiosk offering to take back reusable shopping bags for $1 each.
It’s part of a new pilot program by Closed Loop Partners’ Consortium to Reinvent the Retail Bag, a multi-year project to develop seamless alternatives to the single-use plastic bag. The group is running a returnable bag pilot from April 17-July 17 in the Garden State. Bring-your-own-bag pilots are also coming to Tucson, Ariz., and Denver.
Launched in 2020, CVS and Target were founding partners alongside Walmart, putting a collective $15 million toward the project.
DICK’S Sporting Goods, Dollar General, The Kroger Co., TJX and Ulta Beauty are sector lead partners of the consortium. The program takes careful steps aimed at finding a solution that’ll integrate smoothly across a complex cultural landscape. Environmental experts argue that faster progress is needed to stop the constant stream of plastic pollution.
The long, winding road to replacing plastic bags
While reliable numbers on total plastic bag waste are hard to come by, an oft-cited 2004 statistic from the Worldwatch Institute estimated that Americans toss roughly 100 billion plastic bags in the trash each year. In 2020, New York alone went through roughly 23 billion plastic bags, according to the state’s environmental conservation department.
Shifting to reusable bags isn’t rocket science.
Judith Enck, President, Beyond Plastics
That’s what prompted Closed Loop Partners to take on the issue—recruiting major retailers to shift shopper behavior at scale. The group started with a competition: soliciting ideas from inventors, innovators and supply chain and packaging experts to identify new ways of solving the problem that consumers face when trying to get what they buy home.
“The incumbent status quo isn’t perfect,” Kate Daly, managing director of the Center for the Circular Economy at Closed Loop Partners, told Adweek. “How do we capitalize on customers wanting something better to deliver solutions that get them what they want and have a lower environmental impact?”
The consortium received more than 450 submissions, with awards going to nine finalists in early 2021. Later that year, four of those solutions were tested in pilot programs at nine CVS, Target and Walmart stores in Northern California. Two of those winners, 99Bridges and Returnity, are powering the returnable bag pilot in New Jersey this summer.
