San José Joins Regional Effort to Promote Reusable Bags: PW Markets helps launch the program with “Got Your Bags?” stencil in parking lots.
Today the City of San José, led by Vice Mayor Judy Chirco and in partnership with other jurisdictions of the Bay Area Recycling Outreach Coalition (BayROC), PW Markets and Keep California Beautiful hosted a press event and reusable bag giveaway to kick off the regional Bring Your Own Bag (BYOB) campaign encouraging consumers to “make it a habit and grab it” by shopping with reusable bags at grocery and other retail stores every time they shop. The event also informed customers about recycling programs for bags. The BYOB campaign is using some of the tools developed to support the statewide “Got Your Bags?” campaign.
The BYOB campaign is a collaborative regional public education campaign led by BayROC and is designed to encourage consumers to shop with reusable bags. Reusable bags have many practical benefits in that they are convenient, inexpensive, durable, have large carrying capacity, and can be used repeatedly. The campaign launch also parallels Pollution Prevention week (9/21-9/27) – the annual weeklong nationwide awareness campaign that focuses on various pollution prevention measures including ways to reduce litter from our waterways. The City of San José will host Pollution Prevention resource fairs at several locations throughout the week where FREE reusable bags will also be distributed.
In San José, the “Got Your Bags?” campaign has a new partner in PW Markets, and is working to bring together a coalition of partners that will help spread the important environmental messages in a number of creative ways. For example, volunteers and program partner staff will stencil the parking lot with the “Got Your Bags?” logo as a reminder for shoppers to bring their bags in from the car when they shop! The stenciling projects will be taking place throughout the Bay Area. To kick off the awareness campaign, Vice Mayor Judy Chirco and Christine Flowers-Ewing jointly painted the first stencil.
California state law (AB 2449) requires grocery stores and pharmacies with more than 10,000 square feet of retail space to provide bins for the collection and recycling of plastic shopping bags. Yet research shows that consumer awareness remains low, and shoppers often forget to bring their bags back to the store. The same holds true for reusable bags.
“Our goal with this campaign is to give consumers that extra reminder so they translate good intentions into action,” said Christine Flowers-Ewing, Executive Director of Keep California Beautiful. “We all play an important role as individuals by using reusable bags and increasing plastic bag and wrap recycling, to help make California the most beautiful and cleanest state in the nation! It is important that Californian residents get the message that they can recycle all types of clean film plastic, such as dry cleaning bags, newspaper bags, and wraps covering paper towels, drinks or other retail items. ”
"We encourage our customers to recycle their carryout plastic bags and other film plastics in our stores and to utilize our reusable bags every time they shop," said Karen Belli, Director of Marketing for PW Markets. “Our company works hard to educate our customers to reduce, reuse, and recycle and the ‘Got Your Bags?’ campaign is a great extra push to reinforce and remind us all. We are pleased to partner with BayROC, Keep California Beautiful and others on the regional BYOB campaign as the statewide partner of the ‘Got Your Bags?’ campaign.”
The “Got Your Bags?” campaign originated as a grassroots effort with the Mariposa County Public Works Department (MCPWD) and the Mariposa County Unified School District, who worked together on a pilot stenciling project in local supermarket parking lots.
