Wal-Mart offers its 1st cloth bags

Reusable shopping bags are coming to Wal-Mart. The world's largest retailer plans to unveil its first recyclable cloth shopping bag this weekend, part of the discount chain's latest efforts to become eco-friendly.

The black bags touting a slogan -- "Paper or Plastic? Neither." -- will be available near checkout counters for $1 each as an alternative for shoppers averse to using plastic bags.

Once the realm of high-end health food stores, reusable shopping bags have started to show up in mainstream grocery stores. Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s participation in the eco-bag trend signals how much green has gone mainstream.

Wal-Mart CEO H. Lee Scott told a standing-room-only crowd of 500 suppliers gathered in Bentonville to learn about Wal-Mart's environmental initiatives that sustainability "is here to stay."

The pending arrival of the shopping bag was disclosed after a daylong "sustainability summit" at a conference center near Wal-Mart's headquarters. The event, the first of its kind for Wal-Mart, focused on how Wal-Mart is changing its practices to help the environment, from working with suppliers to use less plastic packaging to cutting back on electricity usage.

Suppliers, for their part, will be scored on how eco-friendly their packaging is starting early next year.