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Loblaws Got a Brand New Bag
By Stephen. Posted on 1:34:00 pm - Thursday, May 10, 2007.

What’s green, goes over the shoulder, is made of pop bottles, and is good for 50 trips to the store?  Meet the new PC GREEN Reusable Bag, which has hit Loblaws grocery stores and subsidiaries like Valu-Mart and Real Canadian Superstore.  The sturdy, attractive shopping bag holds up to 10 kg of stuff, is fully washable and completely recyclable, down to the threads and tags. 

And yes, it started life as plastic bottles.  It takes six 500 ml water bottles or a couple of 2 L pop bottles (plus 15% new material for strength and integrity) to make one of these polyethylene totes.  The bag features the graphic of a drink bottle to remind you where it come from – a kind of magic bottle, filled with leafy organic greenness.  The bottle picture is surrounded by the words “EARTH,” “WATER,” “ENERGY,” and “RESPONSIBILITY” – in English and French.

“RESPONSIBILITY” is a word that applies to Loblaws, who started the PC GREEN brand of eco friendly products 20 years ago, far ahead of the current green marketing blitz.  The shopping bag, in fact, has hit the stores along with a whole spankin’ new line of PC GREEN products.  “RESPONSIBILITY” is also about you, the buyer, who can help to fight climate change by taking small, simple actions in your life, like buying chlorine-free bleach, cold water detergent and the 99-cent PC GREEN bag. 

According to Loblaws this sturdy bag will make it through a year of weekly grocery trips, which saves 100 plastic shopping bags from landfill.  If Loblaws sells around 10 million PC GREEN bags like they expect to, it would divert a billion standard plastic bags from the city dump.  After that year of shopping is up you can return your bag to any Loblaws store to be re-recycled into new bags.  (If you bring them back again they can be re-re-recycled, and then after that… you get the idea.)

For those of you power shoppers out there, there’s the lightweight and spacious PC GREEN bin, with its own carrying straps, for hauling out a car-sized load. 

Loblaws didn’t get to be Canada’s biggest food store by forgetting the little things, like giving the eco-conscious shopper lots of green goodies to put in their smart new carrying things.  The new PC GREEN lineup includes unbleached Pick-a-Size paper towels, chlorine-free toilet bowl cleaner, active oxygen bleach, natural lawn fertilizer, corn cob cat litter and fire logs made from used coffee grounds. 

“Earth,” “water” and “energy” are the three power words of PC GREEN, and are stamped on the products as well as the bags.  “Earth” means you can recycle it, “water” means it’s chemical-free and “energy” is for products that cut down on power use. 

The Loblaws website offers tips for saving energy in your home, how to garden organically and convincing your family to go green. 

Canada’s biggest grocer is stepping up to the plate.  The question is, will you, the consumer, step up to the express line? 

Tags: Green reusable bags, Loblaws, plastic bags, waste reduction

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