K-VA-T/Food City to Offer Re-usable Grocery Bags

ABINGDON, Va. -- K-VA-T Food Stores here, which operates stores under the Food City banner, will introduce a new re-usable shopping bag program.

Customers will be able to purchase the re-usable bags for 99 cents and bring them back into the store on each shopping visit to carry their purchases, the company said. The new bags, which are machine washable and constructed from recycled plastic, are equipped with sturdy handles and a rigid bottom to make them more convenient to use, the company said.

K-VA-T cited the April 9, 2007 issue of Time Magazine, which reported that Americans are using 100 billion plastic shopping bags annually, which equates to an astounding 21,000 barrels of oil daily to produce them.

"We hope to reduce the usage of traditional plastic bags by 10 percent through the introduction of our new re-usage bags,” said Steven C. Smith, Food City president and c.e.o., in a statement. “For many years, Food City has proudly offered the service of plastic bag recycling to our customers, and we're excited to take the program to the next level."

K-VA-T is encouraging shoppers to deposit the bags in collection containers at each Food City location. The bags are bundled, along with the store's pallet plastic wraps, and recycled through Trexa in Winchester, Va. to produce composite building materials. Last year alone, Food City recycled nearly one million pounds of plastic through their recycling program.

K-VA-T is working with WBIR-TV in Knoxville, Tenn. and WJHL in Johnson City, Tenn. On the program.

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