VIRGINIA, USA — Wegmans announced Monday that beginning July 1, they will be removing single-use plastic bags from their Virginia and North Carolina locations.
The remaining stores in Virginia where Wegmans will be removing their single-use plastic bags are the Leesburg, Dulles, Potomac, Lake Manassas, Virginia Beach and Charlottesville locations, according to a press release.
Paper grocery bags will continue to be available at the grocery store chain for customers to use but Wegmans says its goal is to convert customers to use reusable grocery bags. Although Wegman's does charge customers $.05 to use the paper bags for groceries, they say that the proceeds of those purchases will be donated to local food banks.
In April, Wegmans announced its goal to get rid of all single-use plastic bags in all of its stores by the end of 2022.
Wegmans says they are continuing to decrease plastic-bag consumption in their grocery stores in their remaining 27 stores in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. The grocery chain says that its commitment to decreasing single-use plastic bags in its stores is its way of helping better the environment.
The initiative they say is to reduce the fossil fuel-made plastic packing in their stores as well as other single-use plastic products by 10 million pounds by 2024.