New World wants your plastic bag feedback

New World shoppers have a choice: To pay for plastic bags – or not.

The supermarket chain is launching a campaign to find out what action customers want it to take on single-use plastic bags.

They’ll have three options to choose from: To pay five cents per bag, 10 cents per bag, or to continue paying nothing.

Proceeds from bag charges will go to environmental or community causes.

Voting on the options will be open until midnight on October 8 at www.bagvote.co.nz. The results will be published on October 10.

Foodstuffs, which owns New World, hoped to implement any change by late January 2018.

When asked why New World wasn’t offering an option to get rid of plastic bags altogether, Foodstuffs managing director Steve Anderson said: ‘‘I think we strongly want to reduce the amount of single-use plastic bags.

‘‘And we have been doing a number of strategies over the years to do that – for instance, a rebates system in the North Island, we use soft plastic recycling, and we also provide a lot of reusable bags.’’

Even if shoppers chose the status quo, New World would still work towards a reduction of plastic bags and options such as soft plastic recycling, he said.

New World had been working on the specific plan in the past month or two as a result of the increasing action about plastic bags, Anderson said.

Pak’n Save, which is also owned by Foodstuffs, already has plastic bag charges in place. That caused a significant reduction in the number of bags used, Anderson said.

A Foodstuffs spokeswoman said New World would also make more reusable bags available for shoppers.

New World would promote the campaign online, instore, via social media and on television.