Just FYI; I was just at my local Disney outlet store here in NJ and made a small purchase. The cast member gave me a plastic bag with no questions asked and no comments about there being no more bags in the future...not sure what that means but maybe the powers that be have rethought the plan to eliminate plastic bags?
I have a feeling that's the case. When I first heard about the 'going green' announcement, I was strongly against it for a variety of reasons, mostly because of the cost of the reusables and the fact I've doubted that Disney Stores are the right sort of place to be 'going green', especially when you consider the fact that the only other places that only offer expensive reusables tend to be wholesalers and certain stores like IKEA, all of which are standalone locations that do offer you the means to carry out the purchase bagless, not to mention that it is yet another dubious example of virtue-signalling on the whole plastics debate that's become a hot topic as of late, and will only end up backfiring. When I went to New York this year (before the announcement) and last year, of the plastic bags I've ended up with when I went shopping there and in Jersey Gardens, I've found the
Disney Store ones to be of superior quality compared to those from other stores such as Target, and even the ones the Disney Stores in the UK use, which often rip apart when laden with dolls, figures and other boxed items, though my only complaint about them is the lower PCR content (75% compared to 95% used in the UK) and
that strong plastic smell they give off, which is enough to fill up a car, especially with the jumbo-sized one I ended up with when I went on a shopping spree there during the Easter sale, though that's probably just my sensitive nose. What I would have rather seen was Disney just charging a very benign fee for the plastic bags (something like 5¢ or 10¢ or whatever the local ordinances allow) like my country already does, and promoted reusing and recycling them, not to mention having an internal recycling system for the bags like the supermarkets (or at least the ones I've been to such as Walmart) already do.
When I researched deeply into how truly 'environmentally-friendly' their reusable bags are compared to plastic (when responsibly used and recycled), I've found that their reusable bags (and other reusable bags made out of the same non-woven polypropylene fabric) have a far greater carbon footprint due to the amount of energy required to produce them, not to mention that, since they're made in China, the amount of emissions from logistics would be phenomenal, and thus would necessitate around 14-30 reuses to offset the same impact as one plastic bag, whereas the Disney Store plastic bags that were made in the USA require far less, and are actually perfectly reusable for shopping and other purposes, though I wouldn't reuse them as binliners or cleaning up after your pet since they're too good for that sort of purpose, and who on earth would want to do that to a bag that has such a cute design on? The other thing about the NWPP reusable bags is that they shed microplastic a lot faster, especially when soaked and/or when reused heavily to the extent that the bag will start to fluff, and I had that happen to the small 75¢ tote I ended up with last year, not to mention that when they're disposed of, they take even longer than most thin plastic bags to properly degrade (around 450-500 years, depending on climate), although I don't know if these sort of bags are as recyclable as H/LDPE plastic bags where facilities exist, but I can't seem to find any info about their recyclability.