King Soopers and City Market to start phasing out plastic bags

Changes are coming to King Soopers and City Market grocery stores in Colorado. Parent company, Kroger, announced Thursday its company will start phasing out single-use plastic bags.

They’re the latest in a string of companies announcing to do away with all plastic items. Starbucks recently made headlines after phasing out their plastic straws.

Opinions about plastic bag use are, for the most part, mixed. Consumers like, Jerry Novack, are passionate about not using them.

“Plastic is probably a leading environmental problem, so I think having less of it is probably a drop in the bucket, but we’ll take whatever drops we can get,” Novack said.

Others say they are fine with the plastic bags.

“We’ve been using them forever, big deal,” Dan Olson said. “I think there’s bigger fish to fry.”

Our crews also posed the classic grocery store question to Bestway Transfer Station General Manager, Alicia Archibald: “Paper or plastic?”

“Paper bags are better, they’re recyclable, they’re easy to get into the recycling facility and then they’ll be separated and they’re generally made from recyclable material already,” Archibald said.

Archibald said the plastic bags cannot get recycled in their plant, so they end up in the landfill.

“It may break down into smaller pieces, but it will never go away so it’s there forever,” Archibald said.

Kroger said it will be 2025 before the bags are gone for good, and are hoping customers will switch to reusable bags.

The notion leaves several skeptical about whether or not the change will actually happen.

“A lot of grocery stores that have been talking about it never actually follow through,” Devin Raymond said.