Bring your own bag, win prizes at Continental Shopping Plaza

Green Valley shoppers now have even more incentive to go green.

Starting this week, patrons of the Continental Shopping Plaza can bring in their own shopping bags to carry their purchases and be entered into a contest to win up to $1,000 in gift certificates to various plaza stores.

Property Manager Roxanne Aiken said she came up with the idea after a trip to Seattle.

“No one there expected a merchant to give them a bag,” Aiken said. “It’s like it was socially unacceptable to not have your own bag.” Aiken, associate broker for Wilson Property Services Inc., said she wanted to find a way to implement that kind of environmentally conscious attitude back home.

“Merchants here at the plaza generally have been trying to think of ways to go green,” Aiken said.

As an evolution of that idea, Aiken said she thought of the promotion as a way to encourage shoppers to bring in their own bags.

Biweekly drawings will determine winners of $50 gift certificates that can be used at over two dozen participating plaza stores, Aiken said. All submitted names will be eligible for the final drawing on Nov. 15 for a grand prize of combined gift certificates worth $1,000.

“All the names will be kept through the six months, and everyone will be eligible,” she said.

Aiken, who has worked at the plaza for 29 years, said that a number of shops in the plaza have been actively pursuing other methods of environmentally friendly habits, and recent changes reflect this.

“We’re going to start having half of our dumpsters be used for recycled materials,” Aiken said. “We’re going to unbleached paper whenever we can. We’re generally trying to think of ways to become greener.”

Aiken also noted that patrons of the plaza that do not bring in a bag can still enter the drawings by donating two cans on non-perishable food at one of the participating stores.

The food will go to the local food bank, Aiken said.

“What we’re hoping to do is truly cut down on waste,” she said. “It’s always been our philosophy to be good citizens of the Green Valley community and this just falls into that whole thought process.”

Each winner will also receive a free nylon tote bag similar in design to the bags Aiken saw in Seattle.

“They’re just cool,” she said.