Coles Backflips On Backflip, Says Actually There IS A Deadline On Its Free Plastic Bags
After thousands of people vowed to boycott Coles, the supermarket has backed down.
How’s this for a spectacular double backflip: after announcing yesterday that it would continue to give away free plastic bags indefinitely following customer complaints, supermarket giant Coles has now hastily clarified that actually, it’ll be stopping this on August 29.
Coles copped enormous public backlash yesterday for its apparent decision to renege on its plastic bag ban, and it seems like that backlash outweighed the pressure they were copping from angry shoppers who didn’t want to pay 15 cents per bag. This morning, Coles CEO John Durkan emailed 115,000 staff letting them know that they won’t be giving out free plastic bags forever.
“We are extending our complimentary bag offer until Wednesday 29 August for our customers in QLD, NSW, VIC and WA,” Durkan wrote, in an email seen by Junkee.
“I appreciate this transition phase is taking longer than anticipated but it is absolutely the right thing to do by our customers.”
Yesterday, though, a Coles spokesperson told the Sydney Morning Herald that the free bags would be available until shoppers “become accustomed to bringing their own bags”, which could be a very long time if we believe cranky boomers’ sob stories about how inconvenient this whole saving-the-planet thing is.
The double backflip comes after widespread calls to boycott Coles over its decision, and quite a few very angry tweets.
Anyway, here we are: you can get your free plastic bags from Coles until Wednesday, August 29, at which point it’s time to suck it up and bring your own bags or pay the (15 cent) price.