Author Topic: Store owners say plastic bag ban causes more shoplifting  (Read 1236 times)

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Offline Cincinnatus

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Store owners say plastic bag ban causes more shoplifting
« on: February 28, 2013, 09:33:38 pm »
Concerns about food borne illnesses being caused by reusuable bags has already been widely discussed but store owners have raised another concern.

They [shoplifters] enter the store with reusable bags and can more easily conceal items they steal. The reusable bags require staff to watch much more closely, and even though the store has a loss-prevention officer and more than a dozen security cameras, it's tough to tell what a customer has paid for and what they may already have brought with them.

According to data released in January by Seattle Public Utilities, 21.1 percent of business owners surveyed said increased shoplifting because of the plastic bag ban was a problem. Results of another survey released in January – one done by an environmental advocacy group that found the ban "popular and successful" – didn't mention the problem of shoplifting.


One Seattle grocery store own reports: ...that since the plastic-bag ban started last July, he's lost at least $5,000 in produce and between $3,000 and $4,000 in frozen food.

"We've never lost that much before," said Duke, who found those numbers through inventories of stolen and damaged goods.

The Dukes opened the Lake City grocery store in June 2011, and Mike Duke said in the year before the plastic-bag ban losses in frozen food and produce were a small fraction of what he's seeing now.

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Store-owners-say-plastic-bag-ban-causes-more-4314744.php

Another of those Liberal Unintended Consequences though I suspect Liberals would say there's no real problem here as these storeowners have been gouging their customers for years and it's time they give back.
We shall never be abandoned by Heaven while we act worthy of its aid ~~ Samuel Adams