You pay for reusable bags from the SAQ!

The sale of reusable bags has allowed the Société des alcools du Québec to raise $10.5 million over the last ten years, while allowing even greater savings.

• Read also: Still no discussion on salaries at the SAQ after 12 months of negotiations

• Read also: SMEs want an end to the SAQ monopoly

In Quebec, the SAQ launched the reusable bag movement by ceasing, in 2009, to offer free plastic options.

Since 2014, year in and year out, the state corporation has earned an income of around $1 million, reveal data obtained through a request for access to information.

Last year, consumers purchased 815,184 bags, for a total amount of $1.3 million.

But above all, this new approach allows substantial savings. In 2008, the plastic bags offered free of charge cost the state corporation approximately $3 million.

The SAQ has not provided an up-to-date estimate of this figure, but inflation has taken its toll since that time.

Disparity

Please note, the figures provided for the 2014-2015 fiscal year do not match those presented by the Crown corporation in response to another access request in 2016.

The SAQ now claims to have sold 1.35 million bags that year. At the time, it rather declared having sold more than 2 million.

Faced with this significant disparity, the person responsible for access to information corrected the previous data.

“We found that the data disclosed in 2016 included packaging sold that is not considered reusable bags to be used for shopping,” explains Dovi Nyaku of the SAQ.

The state-owned company adds that at the time the response also included “gift bags and gift wrapping.” “Also, the data included reusable bags which were given by the SAQ to customers (as part of promotions, for example), and which were therefore not sold,” writes M^me Nyaku.

However, the request for access at the time did indeed specify that these were “reusable bags sold by the SAQ”.

Note that the state-owned company is the target, along with several other companies, of a collective action concerning “false representations concerning “recyclable” bags”.

The companies Dollarama, Rona, Metro, McKesson Canada (Uniprix), Toys ”R” Us, Costco and Tigre Géant are also involved in this class action.