Walmart to Ditch Paper Bags in New York Stores

If you don't already have reusable grocery bags, you're going to need them soon when Walmart stops selling single-use paper bags in New York stores.

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According to a report by Abby Reinhard of BestLife, Walmart will stop offering customers single-use paper bags at checkout on January 18, 2023. New York State has already banned single-use plastic bags from being used in stores, but shoppers could still pay an extra five cents to use a single-use paper bag if they wanted to.

Personally, I've been on the reusable bag bandwagon for a long time. They're sturdy, they hold more items than a regular single-use bag, and they're better for the environment. But on occasion, and I'm sure I'm not the only person this happens to, I will forget to take the reusable bags from my kitchen back to the car so I can use them the next time I have to go grocery shopping.

Of course, you can always buy more reusable bags at Walmart if you realize you left yours at home. That's how unstoppable collections of reusable bags start. And yes, it may defeat the purpose of the reusable bag to keep buying more of them, but it'll be worth it when you have one shopping trip where you need a lot of things and you already have 20 bags in the trunk of your car waiting to be filled.

So if you're planning a Walmart trip over the next couple of weeks, you might want to stop by the reusable bag section and pick up a few. Because if you find yourself with no bags on January 19th and the reusable bags are out of stock, it's going to be a rough 12 trips to get all the groceries from your car to your door.