Dear Editor,

Great article by Cindy Filipenko last week on voluntarily saying “no” to plastic bags. The Oracle has been plastic bag free since June 2012, after conducting a survey of our client base (results of the survey http://theoracle.ca/responsibility/). While it was challenging for both our customers and our team in the beginning, we have dug our heels in and stuck with the program.

We have met all three types of people (never re-usable, re-usable but forget, always re-usable), but the overall response has been about 90 per cent positive. We have re-usable bags available at the cost of production, but we encourage our customers to use bags they already have on the go. We are not “store proud” so are happy to put Oracle purchases in another store’s reusable bag to cut down on the whole mess.

There are times we have had to use a plastic garbage bag to cover a painting on a rainy day, or find a plastic bag to appease one of the 10 per cent who refuse to reuse, and we do use plastic bags in our garbage can.

Bottom line, we used to go through over 1,000 plastic bags per month, now we use less than 10.

Kelly Oswald

Whistler