Supermarket seeks votes on big plastic bag move

New World shoppers have a choice in front of them. 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 continue paying nothing.

Proceeds from any bag charges will go to environmental or community causes. Voting will be open online until midnight on October 8 at bagvote.co.nz.

Results will be published on October 10 and Foodstuffs, which owns New World, hoped to imple- ment any change by 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 re-usable bags.’’

Even if shoppers chose the status quo, New World would still work towards a reduction of plastic bags and options like soft plastic recycling. ‘‘We want to reduce the number of single-use plastic bags [going] into the environment as a result of our business.’’