Checkout time for single-use plastic bags

Single-use plastic checkout bags will no longer be available at any of the country’s main supermarket chains.

That era ended yesterday when the last of Foodstuffs’ New World, Pak ‘n Save and Four Square operations phased out the bags. Countdown supermarkets stopped providing singleuse plastic bags in mid-October 2018.

Supermarkets were required to stop supplying single-use bags from July 1 this year, but have implemented the change six months early.

Foodstuffs spokeswoman Antoinette Laird said customers should be ready for the new era. ‘‘Throughout the country, some stores have removed the bags and had various reusable options available, and that’s been going on for months.

‘‘I think consumers accept that a change has to be made, and I think they’re ready to move on.’’

The retirement of single-use checkout bags has come around the same time as problems with efforts to recycle them have become increasingly obvious. A few days before Christmas, The Packaging Forum announced it was suspending its soft plastics recycling scheme for the first three months of 2019. Foodstuffs said it had collected twothirds of the total volume of plastics that went through the scheme. Countdown said the end of single-use plastic carrier bags in its stores would remove about 350 million plastic bags from circulation each year.