UK finally moving towards carrier-bag crackdown

One of the most distressing sights upon visiting the UK (and there are many) is the orgy of plastic-bag-grabbing at the checkouts of supermarkets up and down the land. Given that everyone now drives to the supermarket and are therefore no longer actually carrying their shopping, this has always struck me as especially wasteful. Tesco alone gave out a staggering three billion plastic bags last year.

On Wednesday, the Daily Mail took a pause from their standard mix of racist outrage and celebrity title-tattle to devote the first ten pages to a campaign to ban plastic bags. Within a few hours they had their first success: Marks & Spencer has announced that they will start to charge 5p for plastic bags, with profits going to an environmental charity. Today, Gordon Brown warned shops that he will legislate if they don't do something about it themselves.

The question is, will the average pikey that shops at Tesco be able to comprehend the idea that a collapsible shopping crate is not only less wasteful, but also more practical, than carrier bags? When Sainsbury's introduced crates that fitted into their trolleys in the late 1990s, the idea failed to catch on and was eventually scrapped in favour of yet more single-use plastic bags. Maybe this time it will be different though.

Daily Mail - Banish the Bags
Gordon Brown backs the Daily Mail's Banish the Bags campaign

Very good idea. Here`s another one. Ban the Daily Mail as well. Think of the newsprint and trees we`d save!

Since the Daily Mail is supporting this idea, I will now wrap every single item in a separate bag. I will then burn these in my garden in an attempt to damage the environment yet further. I trust the good readers of TT will assist me in this campaign - I have Jonathan Harmsworth's email address, so if you take photos of the inferno that results from burning 124 carrier bags, I'll forward these over to him.

It seems quite unlikely that the DM would launch a campaign and then a major retailer would just suddenly decide "within a few hours" to change its bag policy.

Is it not more likely that following earlier, regional trials in Modbury, news had leaked from M&S that the experiment had been a success and they were about to issue a press release about bag charges, so the Daily Mail "launches" its "campaign" one day before?

I hate those bloody collapsible things, the bottom fell out of my last one & it took forever to clean the mix of eggs & wine off the driveway. Besides I use the plastic bags as binliners

Here's what Marks has to say Marks & Sparks

Several towns in Britain have already banned placky bags including my home town of North Berwick that last years banned them from all the shops in the town.

and North Berwick certainly did not do it because some hatefilled pile of bigotry like the DM told them so

Bags aren't necessarily a bad thing, it's just the overuse of plastic ones that causes the problems. We have a variety of heavy cotton to some sort of woven plastic material for packing groceries at the supermarket. I think Superquinn was the first shop to introduce these re-usable bags in Ireland and after the tax on plastic bags, they certainly became more popular.

There are bags for your bottles of beer/vino too No breakages, very important!

I'd say it's done well in Ireland. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2205419.stm This is an old report, but although there has been a slight increase on bag usage since the tax, it is nowhere near the original consumption. They do hike the price every so often but then how else would they make money for the Government's coffers...and oh yeah, the environment.

I heard a discussion on the radio the other week about Berwick-on-Tweed wanting/trying for various reasons to become part of Scotland and deprive England of a very nice town.

Yes I know its got nothing to do with plastic bags.

Two amusing points about this from Radio 4 this morning:

1) Gordon Broon reads the Daily Mail, or at least that's what they said. Honestly it's no wonder the country is so screwed.
2) Ireland did this (stopped giving out free bags), but because the bags you get for 5p are much thicker than the free ones and they're very rarely reused the amount of plastic consumed actually went up.

I'd trade Berwick-upon-Tweed for North Berwick to be fair.

I would agree the plastic bags are thicker and cost more now than 5 english pence, I'm think it was 22 cent from July 2007 for a normal plastic bag. I do reuse these, so other people must too.

But we have a wide variety of foldable canvas bags in supermarkets too. They cost 1 euro and I think a lot of people would bring those to the supermarket every week and reuse those, so they must be cutting down on some of the plastic! These bags are much stronger than any plastic bag and or the cotton bags I see here in Galeria. I would bring these into town with me as well as to the supermarket.

The clothes shops and chemists and so on tend to use paper bags which can be recycled...I'm assuming.

Here in Germany the policy seems to be a bit mixed. In some shops they do sell light canvas bags. But in other big supermarkets they have signs beside trolleys, asking people not to bring in bags with them.
Do you think people would take to it in the UK?

when we have managed to stop plastic bags then hopefully we can move of to the stupid amount of packaging everything in wrapped in.
why do you have to sell a coconut in a little tray and then wrap it all up in plastic. its a shell!! it comes with its own natural packaging, just stick a sticker on it.

At least the packaging here isn't as bad as it is in Japan. Over there I've been in supermarkets and seen potatoes individually packaged on their own little polystyrene tray and shrink-wrapped in cellophane. And if you buy a canned drink in a convenience store they even give you a little plastic bag to put it in. One time I even bought a coffee to go and they tried to give it to me in a bag. Bizarre.

well the other day in london i brought a brownie (which i was planning on eating right away) and the guy gave it me in a little box and then put that in a bag. when i told his i didn't need all that and i would just have in it my hands he got all pissed off saying 'well im going to have to chuck the box away now its been used'!! Mental!

If you get home delivery of groceries in the UK, you can choose delivery without bags. I think for some stores it might not even be optional. This means they bring the groceries to your door in big crates, which you unload and they take back. The only things that are bagged are things that need to be kept separate, like meat or frozen products. All the stores have programs to reduce the use of bags already. Bags for life, getting points for bringing your own bags to pack in, etc etc. This isn't brand new.

its also got nothing to do with North Berwick which is a Royal Borough IN Scotland to the East of Edinburgh and nowhere near the English Berwick-upon-Tweed which is in Northumbria

okay, then I'd trade Glasgow for Manchester in return

Unexploded plastic bag found in town centre




Scary stuff indeedy.

I've still got a couple of those Sainsbury boxes , I think they were great.

Indeed, inspired by this thread I think I'll start using them again instead of the couple of Tesco's plastic bags I've been re-using since I was in the UK the other week...

"besides I use the plastic bags as bin liners"

Never get tired of hearing that one.

Ignorance really must be bliss.

They were talking about this just now on the radio, They had a man from the so called plastic bag consortium (I jest not) totally denying that plastic bags cause any trouble at all. According to him Britain is a wonderfully clean place unlittered by plastic bags.
Its the usual story of the UK in self denial about more or less everything. I would not bank on us banning PBs yet, and if we do we are bound to make a mess of it.

Plastic Bag Consortium - Please stop the world I want to get off.

I was a little sceptical they exist but it seems they do.

Another point of view

Yes, it's quite amazing the lengths that some people will go to in order to preserve the status quo. Of course the "Carrier Bag Consortium" is just a front-group for the packaging industry (Packaging and Industrial Films Association), who presumably want as much packaging to be produced as possible.

They claim – somewhat bizarrely – that a ban on carrier bags would lead to an increase in the amount of plastic being produced. If this was true, surely they'd be in favour of a ban?

But as they clearly care about the environment then they are obviously showing the rest of the world that their view is wrong and their caring sharing view is correct.