The Kroger Grocery Chain Is Going To Make Shopping Harder — For A Good Reason, Though

In recent months, we’ve seen multiple food industry giants take massive strides to minimize their production of single-use plastics. McDonald’s and Starbucks have teamed up on a campaign to design a recyclable/compostable cup. And Starbucks announced it would ban plastic straws from all its locations by 2020. Now, Kroger has joined the movement, having announced it will eliminate plastic bags from its stores by 2025.

Kroger, America’s largest grocery store chain, released a statement on August 23rd alerting its customers to the future removal of single-use plastic bags. The company plans to transition into reusable bags within all of its Family of Stores.

QFC will be the first Kroger-owned chain to make the switch. By 2019, all QFC stores will have made the move from plastic to reusable bags.

“As part of our Zero Hunger | Zero Waste commitment, we are phasing out use-once, throw-it-away plastic bags and transitioning to reusable bags in our stores by 2025,” Kroger’s chairman and CEO Rodney McMullen stated via the press release. “It’s a bold move that will better protect our planet for future generations.”

Through its Zero Hunger | Zero Waste movement, Kroger also plans to achieve its prior goal to be a Zero Waste company by 2020 and a Zero Food Waste company by 2025.

We're honored to be named #6 on @FortuneMagazine's Change the World 2018 List for our #ZeroHungerZeroWaste plan, which aims to end hunger in our communities & eliminate waste in the company by 2025. Join us in our commitment! #FeedTheHumanSpirit https://t.co/YiEDpUvlcQ

— Kroger (@kroger) August 21, 2018

Kroger estimates that some 100 billion single-use plastic bags are put into landfills, every year, in the United States. And single-use plastic bags are the fifth most common single-use plastic that has been found to be polluting the environment.

It’s estimated that less than 5% of those 100 billion single-use plastic bags are recycled annually.

With this new initiative, matched with its movements already in play, Kroger absolutely earned its spot on Fortune magazine’s Change the World 2018 list. We’ll happily use reusable bags when grocery shopping if it means our world will be a cleaner, healthier place.

To help you on your journey toward being more environmentally-friendly, we created a video with some helpful upcycling tips:

Mother Nature will thank you.