Dear Mr Jones and Mr. Crenshaw, CEO and  Head Chair of Publix Grocery Stores

     Would you please take a moment to read the following. All the signatures below are from your customers who care about our planet and appreciate your stores. First we want to THANK YOU for your signs at each of your stores to remind customers to bring their reusable bags. I recently spent 2 months in Florida and purchased many items from your stores. I rarely saw anyone with reusable bags. How many times do you forget your bags in the car? Let's face it, we have a society of convenience and laziness.  I saw mostly one or two items per plastic bag. So many bags being used unnecessarily. I asked for paper. Your checkers had a hard time finding them and shared that they were discouraged to use paper bags because they cost more.

WE ASK THAT YOU BE A PIONEER IN FLORIDA and ban plastic bag use from your stores!  You are the #1 grocery chain in Florida and your customers will appreciate your stand for our environment!  You can start with charging $0.10 each bag then let your customers know they will be banned on a certain day. It will create revenue at first then save you revenue. You can also put boxes in the front of the store and save money for all of the hours paid to your employees for breaking them down. If customers forget their bag they carry it out like Costco. We did it in Hawaii 3 years ago and everyone was fine with it! 

THIS IS A WIN FOR YOU AND THE ENVIRONMENT!

We use over 4 billion single-use plastic bags every year, that's over 10 million each day! Only 3% of them are currently being recycled, 200,000 bags are dumped in landfill every hour, and they take between 50 and 1000 years to degrade.

Plastic bags have many negative impacts on our planet, animals and the community.
In the marine environment, they are commonly mistaken for food like tasty jellyfish, and a great variety of animals like birds, whales, seals and turtles, can choke to death, die of starvation or infections because they have ingested plastic bags. Many critters also get entangled in plastic bags and packaging floating in the oceans, which can cause them injuries, starvation and even death.

It is also estimated that 30 to 50 million plastic bags end up as litter on our beaches, streets and parks and it costs governments, businesses and community groups over $4 million a year to clean up littered plastic shopping bags. Imagine the changes that could be made in our community if the government spent this amount on education, cultural or environmental programs?

Plus, plastic bags are produced in factories that use energy made of gas, oil and coal. These production processes emit high amounts of dangerous greenhouse gases into our atmosphere, which contributes to global warming. Plastic bags are also made of petroleum, which is a non-renewable resource rapidly depleting which we should stop using altogether.

Thank you for your time reading this and we hope we can thank you for reducing your footprint on our beautiful planet. The Children will Thank You!

Blessings to you and your families Victoria Bliss and the Floridian Communities