BARRIE -- Do you need bags with that? It's the question most shoppers have become accustomed to hearing at the grocery store.
But at the Foodland in Thornbury, those old plastic bags are nowhere to be found.
"There's no denying it, single-use plastic bags are suffocating the planet!" Grade six students at a local school wrote letters to the Foodland manager, Brian Leduc, pushing for change.
"They clog up waterways and are dangerous to animals, especially birds and marine life," wrote another student.
"They said that we've got to do something, it's killing, it's choking the life out of our oceans. I said, we really gotta get on this." And Leduc didn't just say it. He did it.
He banned single-use plastics in his store, instead, offering reusable sacks made from recycled water bottles for produce, and paper wrapping for meat.
The ban has been in effect for nearly two weeks, and most customers don't seem to mind.
"I think it's wonderful, it's long overdue," said one person.
Others aren't quite sure.
"It's just because people keep forgetting them. I'm one of them, I just did it now, so I have to buy more," said another.
Leduc says he is the first Foodland store in Ontario to go single-use plastic-free, but he won't be the only one for long. He says all the grocery stores under the Sobey's umbrella will follow suit by the end of January.
