Why You Should Bring Your Own Bags To Shop At Wegmans

Bringing reusable bags to the supermarket is a powerful part of sustainable grocery shopping. At Wegmans, the grocery chain has been encouraging customers to hone their practice. Wegmans has been leading the push to eliminate single-use plastic waste on the grocery front, an eco-pioneer wielding a sort of reverse-incentive strategy. It offers paper bags, and (trust us) you want to avoid using them.

Over the course of 2022, Wegmans phased out single-use plastic bags at all of its store locations nationwide. For shoppers who don't bring a reusable bag with them, paper bags are available for a 5 cent charge. The small-but-mighty incentive proved powerful to sway customer opinions (or at least their habits). According to an official press release by the company in September 2022, "In stores where Wegmans has already eliminated plastic bags, on average, paper bags are used for 20-25% of transactions, while the remaining 75-80% use reusable bags, or no bag at all." However, that 5 cent fee alone likely isn't to thank for those impressive figures.

Unlike the famously-sturdy paper bags from Trader Joe's, Wegmans' paper bags don't have handles. If you're picking up more than a few things, it makes for a supremely awkward carry. In a Reddit thread dedicated to Wegmans' plastic bag ban, the top comment (with over 200 upvotes) writes, "If they would just use paper bags with ... handles it would be a lot better. Ah well." Bringing your own bags to Wegmans isn't just sustainable, it's also a lot more practical.

Still, if customer reactions (perturbed or not) are any indication, Wegmans has been effective at getting shoppers to bring their own bags to reduce waste and pollution. The company's' zero-plastic initiative launched at a Fredericksburg, Virginia location on January 1, 2022, and by April, 61 of Wegmans' then-106 total stores had already phased-out plastic bags. The environmentally-friendly movement swept from New York (the Rochester-based chain's home state) to Virginia, Massachusetts, Maryland, and New Jersey, followed by North Carolina, and finally Pennsylvania in September. The move coincided with many single-use bag bans at the legislative level, initially inspired by the New York State Bag Waste Reduction Act of 2020. Today (according to data analytics firm ScrapeHero), Wegmans has expanded its presence to 114 U.S. stores, all of which ditch the plastic.

Jason Wadsworth, Wegmans packaging, energy, and sustainability merchant, shared in a 2021 statement, "By eliminating plastic bags and adding a charge for each paper bag, our hope is to incentivize the adoption of reusable bags, an approach that has proven successful for us in New York State and Richmond." Soon, the bag ban became synonymous with the Wegmans brand – not unlike the "Aldi quarter," the unspoken cart etiquette that has sparked some debate. Although, Wegmans has been carrying reusable grocery bags since 2007. Nowadays, the store also offers an updated thermal insulated grocery bag, which runs for $3.99 – or, if you've got a bag at home, it's free to bring.