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A sign promoting the use of reusable bags is posted on a cart return station outside a Kroger Co. grocery store in Cincinnati. AP Photo

Lynne Curtiss places her reusable Kroger Co. shopping bags in her car after shopping, in Cincinnati. AP Photo

CINCINNATI — Supermarkets are finding a little bit of green doesn’t make a big difference in breaking shoppers of the “paper or plastic?” habit.

Some chains including Kroger and Safeway are starting to move away from the pennies-per-bag rebates, saying they don’t do enough to keep customers from forgetting reusables at home or in their cars.

Grocers save money when customers bring reusable bags. They also want to stay ahead of plastic-bag bans and taxes that could cost them or their customers more money.

Kroger Co., the nation’s largest supermarket chain, had been giving three- to five-cent rebates or fuel discounts for each reusable bag. But it ended the bonuses this year in some regions. C

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WINONA LAKE, Ind. (AP) — The Indiana Economic Development Corp. has created a new program aimed at attracting new resources and increasing access to capital for Indiana entrepreneurs.

The agency will use its 21st Century Research and Technology Fund to create a statewide entrepreneurial network to engage private investors and regional partners in creating and supporting new companies.

Executive Director Mark Becker of the Northeast Indiana Fund says the program incorporates the best aspects of other national models developed in Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Oklahoma.

The corporation says it hopes to attract an additional $30 million in matching federal and private funding to support Indiana entrepreneurial efforts.

The program called Invest Indiana was announced Thursday at a meeting of the corporation’s board of directors in the northern Indiana community of Winona Lake.

2/17/2010 — The most significant employment-related issue of the past week was a legislative vetting of HB 2038, which conforms Oregon’s expression of milk in the workplace law to new federal mandates contained in the 2010 federal health care reform law. The House Human Services Committee began taking up the bill earlier this week.

Currently, under Oregon law, mothers can express milk in the workplace for up to 30 minutes for each four hour time period of work. Such breaks are unpaid. The Oregon law applies only to companies with 25 or more employees. A company of any size may apply for an undue hardship exemption.

The new federal law is considerably more stringent. Under the federal law, an employer must provide a reasonable rest period to express milk each time the employee has a need to express milk. The new federal regulations apply to even small companies with fewer than 25 employees, and no company with more than 50 employees may apply for an undue hardship exemption.

AOI understands that federal supersedes state law, and that generally, state conformity with federal law is advantageous for employers because it allows for ease of administration. But

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Nicolas Sarkozy will on Wednesday welcome Jacob Zuma to France as leader of an emerging great power and a key player in Paris’s plan to use its Group of 20 (G20) presidency to reform world finance. Read more…

Blame it on Starbucks. Consumers seem to be looking for ways to personalize everything they buy. It’s not just picking apps for their phones, special touches for their shoes or music for their iPods, but down to customizing everything from mashed potatoes to the water they drink.

Last week Kraft, the Northfield-based food giant, introduced its first new brand since the DiGiorno pizza line in 1995: MiO, a squeeze bottle of flavoring and a dropper priced at $3.99 that allows consumers to doctor their water to taste with such flavors as strawberry-watermelon and pomegranate.

“Consumers are really looking to have their personal tastes reflect in all things they’re doing and using,” said MiO senior brand manager Liza Laibe. It’s particularly important for millennials, which Kraft pegs as those age 18 to 39.

Kraft is expected to back MiO with the full force of its marketing muscle. Laibe declined to say how much would be spent but said television ads, from McGarryBowen Chicago, will begin airing in late March. Read more…

If you’re a Canadian employer, you already know that payroll information returns are due at the end of this month. You have to have filed a T4 or a T4A return by the last day of February (and have given a copy of the slips to your employees).

If you need help filling out your employee information slips, the Canada Revenue Agency has several guides and pages on completing and filing payroll information returns to assist.

One of the Canada Revenue Agency’s tools that I find most useful is this clickable T4 Statement; clicking on any box on the image of the form brings up specific help about the information that needs to go into that box.

Another is the Canada Revenue Agency’s Payroll Deductions Online Calculator. It includes a feature to help employers make sure that enough Canada Pension Plan contributions and Employment Insurance premiums have been withheld for the past and current years.