Grocery Store Prints Embarrassing Logos on Plastic Bags to Deter Customer Use

Single-use items like plastic bags cannot be recycled

Plastic Bags
Shoppers leave a store with their purchases in plastic bags. (Cate Gillon/ Getty)
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Bring your own reusable shopper or carry around a bag advertising a local pornography store.

That’s the concept thought up by the East West Market in Vancouver, a business that prides itself on being a friend of the environment. The shop believes that printing slogans like “Into the Weird Adult Video Emporium” and “Wart Ointment Wholesale” will deter its customers from indulging in single-use bags.

“We wanted to give them something humorous, but also something that made them think at the same time,” the store’s owner David Lee Kwen told The Guardian. “It’s human nature not to want to be told what to do.”

Kwen added that when a five-cent fee per bag did nothing to get his customers’ attention, he knew he had to step up his game in order to make them think twice about using so much plastic. Millions of bags from grocery stores are used just once before being thrown away, The Guardian reported.

While the funny bags have become a sort of collector’s item among his customers, Kwen said that he believes his plan is working and that his business has at least started a conversation.

Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, announced his plan earlier this week for a nationwide ban on all plastic bags, straws and cutlery by 2021.

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