With the RB Patel Supermarkets announcing the phasing out of plastic bag usage by 2019, employment opportunities will be created by this move.

The supermarket is a subsidiary of the Fijian Holdings Limited and its Group Chief Executive, Nouzab Fareed says RB Patel will work with women’s groups to sell hand-made reusable bags.

Fareed says since last year, the Ba Women’s Forum through the Women’s Ministry has been supplying eco-friendly bags to the supermarket.

“People are doing the weaving of a basket or sewing bags out of clothes which are biodegradable and we’ve already started selling them. In the future we want to do it 100% so whatever packaging we sell it becomes biodegradable.”

Meanwhile, Fareed says the supermarket collected close to $400,000 from the government’s plastic bag levy initiative last year.

The supermarket’s plastic bag sales for the same period reduced by 40 percent.

In the 2018/2019 National Budget, the government increased the plastic bag levy from 10cents to 20cents to promote the use of reusable bags.