Just a bit more than a year ago, department store Brown Thomas began charging customers 60 cent for branded paper carrier bags.
There was much gnashing of teeth, with some customers irked by being asked at the till to pay for a branded paper bag to carry home their purchases after potentially spending hundreds of euro in store.
Brown Thomas said the move was designed to promote sustainability and reduce the number of bags it handed over the counter.
It also said the profits from the bag initiative would be used to fund a scheme to plant 100,000 trees here over the next 10 years in partnership with Crann, a voluntary organisation promoting hedgerows and woodlands.
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A year on, how has the initiative gone?
“It has achieved all of the sustainability goals,” Donald McDonald, the retailer’s chief executive told The Irish Times. “We’ve planted the 10,000 trees, and we’ve reduced bag consumption by close to 40 per cent.”
What has been the reaction of customers over that time?
[ Brown Thomas defends decision to charge customers 60 cent for paper bagsOpens in new window ]
“There’s little or no noise from customers. That’s not to say that there’s none, but last month it was fewer than five complaints. There are people who don’t agree with the principle.
“But we believe there’s an environmental cost to the bag itself and the whole thing was to change customer behaviours around bags. It has achieved what we wanted to achieve.”
Other Irish retailers are also charging for paper bags, though it’s not clear if any of them are diverting the funds for green initiatives.
Worth noting, too, that the Selfridges department store in the UK, which is part of the same group as Brown Thomas, does not charge for paper bags.
“Every business makes its own decisions,” McDonald said diplomatically.
Based on the results to date, it would appear that Brown Thomas hasn’t made a bags of customer relations with the charge.
