Walmart also found if they kept their gas prices at $2.99 then people would come and buy gas and they would make up the difference in selling soda, snacks, concessions etc. Again the $3.00 magic number was killing their sales because people started driving less.

You can’t kill off America’s love affair with cars, but for the short term you sure can convince people not to drive all over.

On a side note plastic bags are also made from petrol and so their price also fluctuates with gas prices. Would you rather bring your own bags to the grocery store or have the stores charge extra money for food to make up the cost? The bags are getting expensive so its no longer cheap for the stores to foot the bill.

Some stores in the US do charge for using plastic bags but most that are going eco friendly give a discount to those that bring their own. This works great in Co-ops and organic stores, but these people are usually already environmentally conscious. It does not work so well in big chain grocery stores, because some how the average American thinks that saving 2% when buying means nothing but paying 2% causes outrage.

Same thing with gas, when gas is $2.99 no big deal, but some how when gas hits $3.00 thats way to much and people drive less. Its just sort of odd that way. But honestly I think, especially in America, the only way to get people to change, is to charge them money. Discounts only work on things like solar panels or big ticket items. Things like groceries, and saving X%, people just don’t care.