This week, the grocery chain Sobey's announced it is phasing out plastic bags, and in North Bay, a 9-year-old boy recently started a similar initiative.
A few months ago, Kyle Samuel walked into the local Sobey's with a dream.
"I was wondering if you would like to be one of the first stores in North Bay to ban plastic bags," Samuel asked.
He has even started his own Facebook page called 'Ban the Bag North Bay'.
Now that dream is on the verge of becoming a reality, because the Sobey's corporation has vowed to no longer offer plastic bags for customers to carry away their groceries as of January.
"Look at all the plastic bags around us. I mean climate change, it's just going to kill our planet," said Samuel.
Though the Sobey's announcement only came recently, the initiative seems to be a welcome one in the North Bay area.
Paul Belanger manages the Sobey's store in North Bay.
"It's been so well received by the customers that after the announcement was made yesterday, I had three or four customers come in last night, not regular customers, but customers that have come in and said 'we love the announcement Sobeys's made today and now you are going to be our store of choice,'" said Belanger.
CTV News asked local shoppers what they thought of the announcement and they had this to say:
"I think it's a great idea. I really do. It will help."
"It's the way of the future and we will just have to get used to it."
And for Samuel, he says it's a step toward protecting his future.
"Plastic bags leads to oil, oil leads to factories, factories leads to smoke, smoke that's hot, so that leads to climate change," said Samuels.
Store officials say at the North Bay location alone, they go through 52,000 bags a year. Which means over the next ten years, this initiative will prevent over half a million plastic shopping bags from polluting the environment.
