Kroger to stop using plastic bags by 2025

America’s largest grocery chain will ban the use of plastic bags at its grocery stores by 2025. 

Kroger announced on Thursday that it would be transitioning from single-use to reusable bags to “better protect our planet,” Rodney McMullen, the chain’s CEO, said in a company statement.

“The plastic shopping bag’s days are numbered,” Mullen said an editorial published by USA Today. “Our customers have told us it makes no sense to have so much plastic only to be used once before being discarded. And they’re exactly right.”

{mosads} 

“We’re the first major retailer in the U.S. to do this,” Jessica Adelman, a Kroger vice president who oversees the company’s sustainability efforts, added, according to the newspaper. 

The move is expected to eliminate roughly 123 million pounds of garbage sent to landfills a year, USA Today reported.

The company currently sells reusable bags at its supermarkets and plans to increase the availability of those bags. Its 9 million daily customers will also reportedly have the option to opt for paper bags as well in the future. 

A Seattle-based grocery chain that is owned by the company, QFC, will reportedly be the first division to eliminate the use of plastic bags by 2019.

The ban comes just weeks after Disney said it will stop using plastic straws and plastic stirrers at its locations across the world by mid-2019. 

McDonald, meanwhile, said earlier this year that it would stop using plastic straws at all of its outlets in the United Kingdom and Ireland. 

U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May announced a nationwide ban on the products in an effort to eliminate plastic waste by 2042.

In the United States, Seattle became the first major city to ban plastic straws and utensils in July, following several other smaller cities and businesses nationwide.