MIDDLETOWN, N.J. – Grocery store customers are walking off with those plastic hand baskets you find in the supermarket, an apparent consequence of New Jersey’s plastic bag ban that went into effect this spring.
“They are just disappearing,” said Louis Scaduto Jr., chief executive officer of Middletown-based Food Circus Super Markets, which owns four Super Foodtown stores in Monmouth County. “I may actually have to just do away with them soon, can’t afford to keep replacing them,” Scaduto wrote in a text message.
It’s not just happening at Super Foodtown. Stop & Shop in Long Branch didn’t have any hand baskets during a recent visit. ShopRite in Freehold Township didn’t have any either.
“Like other retailers across the state, we have experienced theft of our handheld shopping baskets – an unintended consequence of the ban on plastic and paper bags,” Stop & Shop said in a statement.
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