Case Study
Aggregating insights and defining best practices to accelerate innovation in retail

A playbook for reducing the waste and expense associated with single-use bags

The Challenge

Retailers across the U.S. are exploring alternatives to single-use bags, driven by shifting regulations, consumer awareness, and the desire to reduce waste. The convenience of single-use bags is undeniable, but with an average use time of just 12 minutes per bag, they are emblematic of a disposable consumer culture that’s bad for the environment and ultimately bad for business. For retailers seeking to act, there are countless solutions to consider — which is why taking action is hard. Exploring and evaluating every potential strategy consumes business resources, and pockets of knowledge may be siloed within certain teams or brands and unavailable to the broader industry. Recognizing the potential of a shared resource to illustrate and evaluate waste-reduction strategies for single-use bags, the Beyond the Bag team set out to build an open-source playbook — a first of its kind in the industry.

‍

100

billion single-use bags used each year in the U.S.

12

minutes average time a bag is used

17

leading retailers contributed to the study

25

strategies for retailers to adopt

The Solution

Working with our retail partners in the Consortium to Reinvent the Retail Bag and our collaborators at the retail consultancy McMillanDoolittle, we embarked on an insight-gathering process that included over 50 surveys and dozens of subject-matter interviews. Using these inputs, we safely aggregated retailer data to surface findings that serve anyone seeking better environmental and financial outcomes when reducing waste from single-use bags. To help retail businesses translate insight to action, we identified 25 strategies retailers can adopt through communications, employee training, customer incentives and bag and fixture design. We illustrated the strategies with anonymized data and categorized them based on level of current implementation.

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“This tool is for retailers who are looking for quick wins and those seeking innovative, new approaches. We hope these insights serve as an inspiration to retailers looking to reduce their plastic footprint and deploy bag reduction solutions.”

– Kate Daly, Managing Partner and CEO of the Closed Loop Center

Impact

We delivered the insights and findings in a playbook, the first comprehensive guide of its kind. The playbook has been downloaded over 350 times by retailers across the U.S. and beyond.

Our Role

Research

  • Subject matter expert interviews
  • Survey design
  • Aggregation and anonymization of retail data

Design

  • Strategic framework development
  • Design and launch of playbook

Build

Download and read the Toolkit

Download
Download

Related Content

THE MOST SUSTAINABLE BAG IS LIKELY THE ONE YOU ALREADY OWN: 5 THINGS YOU CAN DO TO REDUCE THE NEED FOR SINGLE-USE PLASTIC BAGS
Insights
Reducing single-use plastic starts with the bag you own

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We are  part of Closed Loop Partners—which includes the largest privately held recycling company in the U.S. and one of the largest circular economy capital management groups in the world—we’re uniquely positioned to bring research, design, and real-world implementation together.