'It's terrible': Handle-free shopping bags leave Safeway customers furious

The question for shoppers used to be "Paper or plastic?" It was never "handles or no handles," as feedback from Bay Area shoppers proved.

As ABC7 reported, shoppers revolted after Safeway began saddling them with handle-free paper bags due to a supply chain issue. 

The complaints revolved around the difficulty in carrying the bags as well as their structural integrity and tearability. 

"I think it's terrible," Tyler Simpson told ABC7. "As soon as I noticed that they didn't have handles, I was like, 'Wow, what's up with that? What's going on?'"

In response to the dissatisfaction, the grocery chain said in a statement that there was "a global shortage of paper bags with handles." 

Nick Vyas, a global supply chain expert at the University of Southern California, attributed the issue to multiple factors, from revoked lumber permits in Indonesia to tariffs on Canadian lumber. 

Shoppers were especially vulnerable to the lack of handles because there were no plastic options after California's long-awaited rollout of a ban on single-use plastic bags.

Such bans severely reduce plastic bag waste and associated pollution, but they can spur unintended effects.

"We make this environmentally conscious decision, which is a right thing to do, but we don't think through it in a sort of a long way, to say, 'Let's make sure that we have processes and alternate solutions in place,'" Vyas told ABC7.

Safeway said it was working to get paper bags with handles but didn't offer a timeline for when that might happen.

In late April, one Instagram user in the Bay Area said their Safeway bags now have handles. Reporting from The San Francisco Standard suggested that the supply chain issue was not fully resolved, though.

Until then, shoppers will need to bring their own reusable bags or grapple with the handleless bags. 

"I don't like it because it's inconvenient," one person said. "I cannot carry it — I need two hands to carry it."

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