-By David Diamond

It's now clear that environmental issues are real serious and require attention from all of us. But addressing these issues is not easy; food retailers face a significant set of environmental challenges, ranging from sourcing product from environmentally sensitive vendors to minimizing energy loss in the stores.

Just as importantly, our consumers are demanding that we run our stores in an environmentally friendly way, but without diminishing the shopping experience -- they want us to run our stores using less energy, but don't want to be too hot when shopping in the summer, or too cold when shopping in the winter. They want us to use less wasteful refrigeration, but they want to see all of their favorite brands and products neatly arranged and easy to reach. That is to say, we need to be environmentally sensitive while not sacrificing the attributes our customers treasure in our stores.

Bag Basics
These are huge issues that we will all need years to wrestle with and resolve. But what I do have to offer today is a simple place to get started -- reusable shopping bags. Developing a good reusable shopping bag program is relatively simple, requires a very small investment, and builds both revenue and customer good will.

So, what are the basics of a good reusable shopping bag program? There are really only two requirements, and then there are plenty of bells and whistles to play with. First, you need to source a good, sturdy, low-cost bag to sell in all of your stores. And second, you need to provide consumers with an incentive to keep using the bag.

If you want a good place to start, selling the bags for $2 and offering a 10-cent rebate every time the bag is used seems reasonable. The price of $2 should allow you to break even or show a small margin on bag sales, while a 10-cent rebate is only slightly more costly than the disposable bags you will replace. Good reusable shopping bags are now widely available, even in quantities appropriate for single-store operators (I know of one vendor who will sell you 250 custom-imprinted, heavy-duty, full grocery-sized bags for $2.10 each).

Have Fun
Once you have these two basics in place, you can begin to have a lot of fun, and use the program to make a statement. Whole Foods Market has been a leader in this area, as you would expect given its environmentally friendly corporate positioning. It started by working with the noted designer Anya Hindmarch to design a custom bag. These items were in such demand that they sold out in hours, and have become a must-have item among the fashion cognoscenti. They are emblazoned with the message "I AM NOT A PLASTIC BAG" in bold script, and feature a variety of somewhat impractical details such as a rope handle. They sold at Whole Foods for about $5, and are now available on eBay, starting at $70.

After running through its supply of designer bags in literally a few hours, Whole Foods rolled out a variety of fun and attractive bags priced at $1 each. It has a line of bags based on retro food cases, and another that says, "I used to be a soda bottle" in a variety of fun colors. And Whole Foods offers a rebate ranging from 5 cents to 25 cents, depending on the store manager, every time you use a reusable bag -- and it makes the offer on any reusable bag, not just its own.

But this is just the beginning of the creative possibilities. Start by having fun with the design of the bag, introduce a new pattern every month, build adjacencies to other in-store events -- perhaps a bright-orange bag to commemorate salmon month. Make the bag more than a utilitarian object. And challenge your consumers to use the bags early and often. Offer a $2 bonus for anyone who spends $100 and uses only their own bags to carry the goods in, or offer a punch card attached to the bag, so if you use the bag 20 times to bring home your groceries, you get the next one free. Most importantly, set the marketing department loose on the idea. They are tired of deciding if Coke should be 79 cents or 89 cents next week -- let them spend some energy bringing a reusable bag program to life.

And finally, consider some more radical approaches -- like eliminating plastic bags entirely (as Whole Foods has done). This will be too aggressive for some retailers, as it crosses the line from asking to telling your consumers what to do, but it is a simple way for you to make a dramatic point while still offering paper bags, which are easily recycled and low cost, as an option for those who either don't want reusable bags or simply forget them.

If you follow these simple guidelines, you can show your consumers that you care about the environment, address a real issue, make some headway in your marketing efforts, and have something fun to talk about at your next management meeting.