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From eschewing name-brand products to requiring a quarter to use its shopping carts, Aldi isn’t like other grocery stores. And that doesn’t stop at the checkout. The internationally renowned German grocery giant is one of the only stores in the U.S. that charges for bags — and they’re paper bags too. As Aldi is a budget grocery store, a couple of bags won’t break the bank, but if you do the bulk of your shopping at Aldi, those roughly $0.12 paper bags might start adding up.
If you’re a hardcore Aldi fan, you’re probably well aware of the chain’s bag fee, but as this longtime cult favorite secures its place as the third-largest grocer in the U.S. (according to Retail Touch Points), growing numbers of Aldi-newbies might be in for a unique style of sticker-shock when it comes time to pack. Aldi doesn’t charge for bags just to make your shopping trip harder though. When a $0.10 fee was introduced in 2023, it was applied to plastic bags, but Aldi kept the fee around when it switched to paper only.
The chain claims that making customers pay for bags discourages overuse of resources and allows the brand to keep prices low and value high. According to current research, it’s unclear whether paper or plastic has more of an environmental impact, so Aldi’s reasoning holds up. You’ll also find reusable bags at the checkout for a little over a dollar, and Aldi stores encourage shoppers to bring their own bags, further proving the brand’s good intentions.
How to avoid Aldi’s bag charge
Given the other options, avoiding the additional cost of bags at Aldi should be simple. In reality, however, remembering to grab bags from home can be surprisingly difficult, especially when a trip to the grocery store is spontaneous. That’s probably why Aldi shoppers — particularly the die-hard fans on the r/Aldi Reddit — have come up with a few workarounds. Most of the tips boil down to one core point: Keep containers in your car! Everyone seems to have a favorite Aldi vessel, including Ikea bags, laundry baskets, plastic tubs, and even heavy-duty bags designed to sit in your cart while you shop (like these ones from Handy Sandy). Keeping it simple? You can fill your trunk with the store’s own reusable bags or give some of those tote bags you usually forget a new home in your glove compartment.
The “car full of bags” trick isn’t failsafe, of course. It’s easy to leave them in the trunk when you go into Aldi and equally easy to take them into the house to unpack your Aldi haul and forget to return them. When this happens, some Redditors swear by the cardboard boxes that staff use to pack shelves, and others are so stubborn that they drive home surrounded by loose produce. If these options both sound like a grocery hack too far, you can always just suck it up and pay for some paper bags. Simply hand the number of bags you think you’ll need to the cashier and they’ll ring them up for you and add them to your bill. Once you’ve made the mistake a couple of times, you’ll probably start remembering those long-life bags along with your Aldi shopping-cart quarter.
