Garbage bag sales skyrocket after supermarket plastic bag ban

Sales of garbage bags have skyrocketed since the supermarket single-use plastic bag ban.

In the past year sales of garbage bags from supermarkets have increased by 23 per cent, according to IRI research.

Daniel Bone, Insights Director at IRI, said retailers have encouraged the rise through discounting.

“The major supermarkets have discounted those products quite significantly,” he told 3AW’s Neil Mitchell.

“A lot of pricing promotions have been run in order to make that aisle a little bit more palatable from a price perspective.

“Australian households were so used to getting their garbage bags essentially free of charge because so many of us were using the single-use plastic bags.”

Mr Bone said the increase is unusual.

“Non-food sales are actually in decline across supermarkets,” he said.

“It’s a fairly significant increase in what is generally a challenging area of merchandise for supermarkets.”

Sales of toilet rolls and nappies are, surprisingly, down over the past year.

“We do have a few theories why,” Mr Bone said.

“Some of those non-food items, especially the larger pack size products like toilet rolls and nappies, these are the kinds of purchases we think are going to shift towards the online shopping space.”

Mr Bone said direct to consumer suppliers, like toilet paper manufacturer ‘Who Gives a Crap’ are also eating into supermarket sales of non-food products.

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