This story was produced by The Xylom, a nonprofit news outlet covering global health and environmental disparities, and co-published by Daily Waadaa
Ruhul Amin was selecting clothes for his daughter from Aarong, a fashion and lifestyle brand, this March, spending a little over Tk2,000 ($16). At the billing counter, he was outraged when the cashier asked him to pay Tk15 — just over 10 cents — for a paper shopping bag. He nearly abandoned the purchase.
“Why should I pay for a bag? Paper bags come free with shopping all the time,” says Amin.
Last September, Aarong’s decision to stop providing free paper bags shocked and annoyed customers. The move was part of its “Bring Your Own Bag” campaign, which charges Tk15 for a paper bag and offers Tk15 cashback to customers who bring their own reusable bags.
The retailer hoped to reduce paper bag use while using the proceeds from bag sales to fund environmental projects, including tree planting.
“The objective was never to inconvenience customers,” Tamara Hasan Abed, the managing director of BRAC Enterprises, a for-profit group that funds social enterprises including Aarong, says. “It was to encourage a more mindful habit.”
By April, customers had used nearly five million fewer paper shopping bags than during the same period a year earlier — equivalent to saving around 6,000 trees, according to the company. The campaign also raised Tk2.89 crore ($236,000) from paper bag sales.
The money raised will be used to distribute 150,000 tree saplings across Bangladesh. Of these, 50,000 saplings will be planted in the drought-prone Barind region of northwestern Bangladesh, alongside irrigation support to improve their survival in one of the country’s driest landscapes. Another 20,000 native trees will be planted near Dhaka to create dense urban green spaces that support biodiversity and help cool surrounding neighbourhoods.
“The planting is planned around the monsoon period, when [sapling] survival rates are more sustainable,” Abed says. “Impact will be measured not simply by the number of trees planted, but by [their] survival, maintenance, community benefit, and ecological outcomes.”
But why are customers unhappy with the campaign?
“Meaningful behaviour change often comes with initial discomfort,” Abed says. “What matters is whether the change is fair, transparent, and linked to real environmental outcomes.”
Marketing researchers say the initial pushback had less to do with the cost and more to do with how customers perceive value and fairness.
“Consumers always want to receive more value than they give,” says Anisur Rahman, a marketing professor at the University of Dhaka who studies consumer behaviour. “When something they have always received for free suddenly comes with a cost, it creates dissatisfaction because it falls short of their expectations.”
That reaction, Rahman says, is rooted in habit. “Behaviour change is a continuous process. It does not happen overnight.”
Antonis Stamatogiannakis, a marketing professor at IE Business School in Spain, believes trust is equally important. “A charge like this may be perceived as a covert effort from the business side to make some extra bucks,” he says. “So the action may be perceived as insincere.” Consumers, he adds, are more willing to accept such changes when companies demonstrate their impact.
“Businesses need to walk the talk,” he says. “They need to be genuinely sustainable and show it.”
Research also suggests that such charges can change consumer behaviour over time. A 2014 Journal of Environmental Psychology study used field experiments in Buenos Aires and found that introducing a bag charge increased consumers' use of their own bags, with the effect becoming stronger two months later. Interestingly, people who brought their own bags often cited environmental protection rather than saving money as their motivation.
Aarong is using every taka collected to reduce bag use and fund environmental restoration, taking a page from the upscale Irish department store Brown Thomas and challenging long-standing expectations that shopping bags should be free.
The campaign is beginning to change how some Bangladeshis shop.
Tanim Ahmed, a regular Aarong customer, used to take as many bags as he was offered because they were free. Now, he tries to fit his purchases into as few bags as possible.
“Most of the time, one bag can cover several items. I didn’t hesitate to take more bags, and even the salespeople used to add more. But with the change in policy, I mostly take one bag, and it actually fits most of my items,” he said.
Ahmed considers himself environmentally conscious, but says the campaign made him think more about the cost of paper bags. “I didn’t really think about how many trees were felled [to make] shopping bags,” he said. “More brands should introduce this to change people’s habits.”
For environmentally conscious shoppers, the campaign has reinforced an existing habit. Tamanna, a private-sector professional, said she had long preferred to carry her own bags when shopping.
“Actually, I have a long-standing habit of carrying bags, even for groceries, because whether it’s plastic pollution or the trees used to make paper bags, I personally don’t like harming nature,” she said. “So it was good to see Aarong taking the lead in encouraging others to become more environmentally conscious.”
Beyond Bangladesh
Across Europe, governments and retailers have introduced policies to reduce single-use plastic bag consumption. In 2015, the Plastic Bag Directive entered into force across the European Union, requiring member states to stop providing single-use plastic bags free of charge. Between 2018 and 2023, plastic bag use fell by nearly a third across EU member states, but still fell short of the target of no more than 40 lightweight plastic carrier bags per person by the end of 2025.
Although no longer part of the EU, annual single-use plastic bag use has fallen in the U.K. by nearly 98% since the introduction of its mandatory charge at large retailers, with shoppers now buying about three bags a year on average, compared with around 140 before the policy.
The Marine Conservation Society, which has monitored litter on British beaches for more than 30 years, reports that plastic carrier bags found during its annual beach clean have fallen by around 80% since the charges were introduced. The UK government estimated the policy would avoid 97,000 to 130,000 tonnes of emissions, although researchers say the climate benefit depends on how often reusable bags are reused.
Europe is in fact behind the curve policy-wise compared to Bangladesh: the country banned single-use plastic bags in 2002, the first country to introduce such a ban. However, a growing body of research has since pointed to enforcement issues after the Bangladeshi ban, raising questions about the unintended consequences when one type of disposable bag is replaced by another.
Besides relying on the self-initiative of retailers, one way to close the loophole is to broaden the levies to all forms of single-use consumer bags: Washington directs revenue from its five-cent paper and plastic bag fee to restore the Anacostia River.
With its campaign, Aarong is trying to revive a simpler and older shopping habit: bringing your own bag. But whether that habit takes hold again will ultimately depend on customers.
For Nazmun Nahar, a Dhaka resident who initially disliked the new charge, the campaign has already changed how she thinks about paper bags.
“I realised how many bags I used to waste,” she said. “Now I take one, and it is enough.”
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