French grocery stores' bag: cheap or ethic?

This article is about the new fashion in the grocery store market. For ethical issues, most of the biggest french grocery stores, such as Leclerc, Intermarché, Champion... decided not to give plastic bags anylonger. The declared reason is that those bags can be bad for ecology, because they are not bio-degradable. We must admit that plastic bags thrown away can have bad effects, and do not respect the ecological environment. But where is the responsability of the grocery store if their bags are not well used? Since when a gun company apologizes because one of their products was used to kill someone? Do Marlboro stop to produce cigarettes because it is unhealthy? To affirm those companies do not give plastic bags anymore for ecological issues is a pure joke.
I think the main reason why these brands decided to stop this service is to dicrease expenses. Everyone who has done one grocery shopping have noticed the huge number of bags given to customers. Of course, this service is expensive, but it is one of the main reason we are going to those stores: to be well-served.
This fact shows clearly the difference of culture between french and american stores. Thus, if you go to stores such as hyvee or wall mart, you will find people to pack your goods, whereas in France, they decided at first not to pack anylonger, but even not to give bags! This shows 2 different profile of culture. One is customer focused, where we try to improve the services to increase the demande and the consumption. On the other hand, one decided to take off services to increase the margins. This fact reminds me the time while in hi fi equipment store, the management decided to restrict the technical brochures to customers (even if it was one of the strength of the brand's concept), because it was expensive.

In my opinion, in our consumption society, the customer service must be the goal to target for a company. To fool them is never good on a long term basis. Carrefour, the biggest grocery store comapny decided to re-give plastic bags to customers. Hence, we will see which strategy was better in a couple of months. Anyway, I am a fervent supporter of plastic bags in grocery stores (american people that will read this article will think France is the third world or became communist...). At least, we do not have to hunt to eat yet...