Healthy discounts

In my last post I mentioned a brief personal experience with how businesses can be irresponsible as far as the health of our world (called environment). Just a few days after this experience I had another one, this time positive. I'd like to talk about it here as an example of how businesses can encourage their customers to make better, or cleaner shopping-style choices.

I was shopping at Vitamin World, now my favorite supplements store. They offer a member's discount for 2 days every month, it's free to become a member, and you get 50% off, which is a great deal (well, I wish I was paid for this advertisement now, but in case you are wondering, I am not!). I became a fan of natural healing, supplements and especially herbs. I might have inherited this passion from my mother, who is the family herb specialist, however I only realized my passion for this field in recent years. Anyway, while doing my shopping for herbs that I know, and some others that I wanted to experiment with, I found this nice offer, and I immediately grabbed it. It's the store cloth shopping bag, which you can now find in many stores as an alternative for the monstrous plastic bags. However in Vitamin World they did something different to promote the usage of this bag, a $1 off your purchase every time you use the bag. That's what I am talking about!

One dollar off is no big deal. But it can be an incentive for people to get it, since they will be saving on the long term. People already look for $1 off, or less, coupons, so purchasing a bag for $3 and saving $1 for the life of the bag is a good deal. I particularly wish that grocery stores would go for the same promotion. People go grocery shopping at least twice a month, if not more, and you can imagine how much of the plastic bags usage grocery shopping account for. Again, if I was a ruler, I'd probably start by forcing grocery stores to do just that. Well, I guess I might be lying here. I think I will force them to eliminate plastic bags altogether. People adapt, and they always use and live with what they have available. It's doing them, and their children, a great good by forcing them not to hurt... the air they are breathing, and much more!