Bags, bags, everywhere
Currently British shoppers get through an astonishing 17 billion plastic bags a year (more numbers here) most of which are used once. It doesn’t take a genius to realise that this is, to put it mildly, a bit wasteful. Tesco (who hand out 4 billion of those bags) have announced a scheme where customers will be given loyalty card points if they reuse bags. This isn’t going to do any harm but I doubt it’ll be very successful either. Some of you might remember that Sainsbury’s used to give a penny back for each reused bag. If you don’t remember it’s because Sainsbury’s didn’t really bother to inform their staff or customers about the scheme. The Tesco plan is better than Sainsbury’s version in that you get desirable loyalty card points instead of undesirable pennies but I firmly believe that in this case sticks are better than carrots.
Irish consumers are have been charged 10p per bag since 2002 which has resulted in a 90% reduction in carrier bag usage. There are some caveats to the success of the Irish system - use of black plastic bags has significantly increased as these aren’t subject to the levy - but there’s no doubt that it has acheived it’s aims. In comparison, a voluntary system in place in Australia has resulted in a 45% reduction.
As for a compulsory schemes in the UK, the Scottish parliament are currently looking at a bill put forward by Liberal Democrat MSP Mike Pringle to introduce a levy on bags. The environment minister Ben Bradshaw would “prefer for this to be on a voluntary basis” but did not rule out a move to compulsory charging, saying that was a decision for the treasury.
Personally, I’m strongly in favour of a compulsory charge for bags along the Irish model. There’s no justification for the current level of waste and no downsides to a change. Normally, I’d be happy to see government keep it’s nose out but sadly the public, in general, have shown no sign of voluntarily changing their behaviour. If anyone reading this isn’t reusing bags already then I urge you to start doing so, it’s one of the easiest ways to reduce you environmental footprint.
Via The World at One.
August 4th, 2006 at 7:11 pm
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September 29th, 2006 at 3:31 pm
[…] In light of Tesco’s recent attempts to buff up their green credentials Sainsbury’s announcement does smack a little of bandwagon jumping but it’s a change for the better either way. It should however be pointed out that recycling material does have energy costs of it’s own and the environmental damage caused by discarded plastic bags remains a problem. I would have preferred to see a two pronged approach of using biodegradable material and strong incentives encouraging customers to reuse their bags. Tesco have adopted this policy (biodegradable bags will be introduced at their stores this month) although it’s unclear at this time how effective their use of reward points to encourage reuse has been. Via Hippyshopper. More at the BBC. […]