Simple store solutions could stop plastic produce bag waste

National Observer

20-05-2025

While plastic bags have bit the dust in Canada at grocery store checkouts, a Toronto study is looking at how increasing the use of reusable bags in the fruit and veggie section can slash a lesser-discussed polluter: single-use plastic produce bags.
Undergraduate researcher Diego Arreola Fernández, supervised by Chelsea Rochman of University of Toronto's department of ecology and evolutionary biology, hopes his findings on alternatives to plastic produce bags can inform policy change for grocery chains and the federal government.
Arreola Fernández, part of the U of T Trash Team led by Rochman, started last June visiting 29 grocery stores in downtown Toronto representing 11 major chains, including Loblaws, Metro and Longo's.
Inside, he counted the plastic produce bags taken from dispensers every 10 minutes.
'We also looked at specific customer behaviour, so discreetly observing customers as they shopped for produce to see how many bags each one of them used, for what items, if they were using reusable bags or if they just put the things in their cart,' Arreola Fernández said.
The analysis concluded that about 2,000 plastic produce bags are used every day at every grocery store.
'When we scale it to all the stores in [Toronto], it's hundreds of thousands of bags used in one day,' he said.
'The few stores that offered [reusable produce bags] had them in the corner, hidden,' researcher Arreola Fernández said. 'That's why we wanted to put them everywhere, to see if that could change.'
Nationally, that's millions upon millions — and they're effectively all headed for the landfill. A 2021 Canada Plastics Pact study estimated only three per cent of film plastics in the country get recycled, including single-use produce bags.
'People don't think they can recycle them,' Rochman said. 'People reuse them often for dog poop, and then of course it's going to go into [the] landfill. But I also think that there's not a good market for recycling them because they're so thin.'
How to change habits
Phasing out single-use plastics at store checkouts has been a win for Canada this decade, but Arreola Fernández said plastic produce bags are still valued for their perceived food safety value, even though that argument doesn't hold water.
'For oranges, for avocados, for pineapple, for lemons, you're not going to eat the peel,' he said. 'You just literally cut it and then throw it away.'
Along with shoppers' overreliance on these bags, Arreola Fernández said the stores were setting themselves up to fail.
'A lot of them had single-use produce bag dispensers in front of produce that arguably did not need them,' Rochman said.
She and Arreola Fernández worked with Longo's from July to September to test how signage could get customers using fewer plastic produce bags. A 2023 study by Canadian researchers helped them pick more positive signage, such as telling customers that not grabbing plastic produce bags reduces waste and protects wildlife, and asking customers to consider putting produce in reusable bags or their cart.
'They showcased that the positive messaging was the one that worked the best,' Arreola Fernández said.
After just testing signage, they added reusable mesh produce bags for purchase alongside plastic bag dispensers, at about a dollar for six bags. Only four of 11 grocery chains they consulted carried reusable bags, and in those stores that had them, they weren't prominent.
'The few stores that offered [reusable produce bags] had them in the corner, hidden,' Arreola Fernández said. 'That's why we wanted to put them everywhere, to see if that could change.'
Lastly, they made the reusable bags free and ready for immediate use. Longo's stores saw doubling or even quintupling usage of the bags.
'All or nothing'
At the store level, Rochman said every chain the study consulted was onboard with banning plastic produce bags. The problem, she added, is nobody will ditch them without a policy requiring all stores to follow suit — because they fear losing customers to chains that keep providing them.
'In Mexico City, we have paper,' Arreola Fernández said. 'They banned the [single-use plastic] produce bags.'
They're not alone. California started its ban of plastic produce bags in January — the first US state to do so.
'It has to be all or nothing,' Rochman said. 'People aren't just going to voluntarily take them out of their store.'
Still, Arreola Fernández was pleased by the initiative he observed Toronto shoppers taking to slash their plastics use. One man brought reusable produce bags to help his elderly mother shop, and one girl grilled her father to take fewer plastics.
He and Rochman will return to each chain with the findings from their stores, and they'll also contact Environment and Climate Change Canada about presenting their results to federal plastics policymakers.
Canadians will see whether the country's existing plastic bag ban remains in place under Prime Minister Mark Carney's Liberal government, particularly as the plastics industry continues its push to upend it. One possible sign of things to come is Carney's appointment Tuesday of Julie Dabrusin, who has worked on the federal ban and campaigned against the negative health impacts of single-use plastics, as environment and climate change minister.
In 2021, plastic manufactured items were labeled 'toxic' under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. However, the industry sued the federal government in a bid to disprove that plastic bags themselves are toxic, and won in court in fall 2023. Canada managed to keep the existing plastics ban and appeal the ruling last summer, with the federal court expected to release its decision this year.
If the policy stays, Canada will regain power to decide which types of single-use plastics to remove from grocery stores next — including plastic produce bags.
Arreola Fernández and Rochman hope to release their study findings this summer, to encourage more chains to reduce plastic bag dispensers, distance them from items that don't need packaging, and offer visible and affordable reusable produce bags.
'Soon, we could also see some changes with these stores that we collaborated with, hopefully as they implement some of the recommendations,' Arreola Fernández said.