Coles and Woolworths reward customers who bring their own shopping bags with points

AUSTRALIAN shoppers who come armed with their own bags at Coles and Woolworths will now be rewarded by the supermarket giants.

SHOPPERS who come armed with their own bags at the supermarket will now be rewarded for doing so as the plastic bag ban saga continues.

This will apply to shoppers across the country, not just in the states where the bag ban have been implemented from July 1.

Coles has revealed they will offer Flybuys points to customers who bring their own bags as they continue to battle the transition of moving customers away from using single-use bags.

Customers have been outraged at having to pay for their own bags if they fail to arrive at the checkout with their own.

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Customers at the supermarket giants will be rewarded for bringing their own bags.

Until next Tuesday, Coles customers who have BYO bags can swipe their Flybuys card at the checkout and will automatically earn 30 Flybuys points once a day.

Coles store operations director Paul Bradshaw said the latest move was “ a small way of saying thank you to our customers for making the switch to reusable bags.”

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Rival supermarket Woolworths is also adopting a similar move and giving customers who bring their own reusable bags bonus Woolworths Rewards points.

But their offer spans for much longer than at Coles — Woolworths customers will be able to collect points for using BYO bags from Saturday through until the end of the year.

Customers will earn two rewards points for every shopping bags they bring with them instore.

The offer is valid for 30 bags to earn 60 points.

Woolworths group chief executive officer Brad Banducci said this “will act as a further prompt for all customers to bring their own bags when shopping with us.”

Environmentally-friendly shopping bags at a Woolworths store.

The supermarkets have faced ongoing backlash from customers in Victoria, NSW, Qld and WA after banning single-use bags from July 1.

This is resulted in both the supermarket giants giving away free 15 cents reusable bags for certain periods.

Coles is still offering these bags to customers in these states for free.

The move by the big two ­supermarkets to dump plastic bags is to help reduce the ­environmental impact of single-use bags.

Concerns have swirled around the use of single-use plastic bags because they are not biodegradable and can have detrimental impacts on marine wildlife and birds.

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Originally published as Coles and Woolworths reward customers who bring their own shopping bags with points