This. They stopped selling single use bags.
Now I just have the option to buy a "bag for life" or nothing. Bags need to be priced at £1-2 to get people to get in the habit of carrying a suitable bag to the shop.
Now I just have the option to buy a "bag for life" or nothing. Bags need to be priced at £1-2 to get people to get in the habit of carrying a suitable bag to the shop.
> Since 2015, when a 5p charge was introduced to tackle plastic pollution, the number being used is down by 90%.
My (anecdotal) evidence is before they were charged, people were using multiple bags without any consideration of whether they were necessary or not, whereas now people may still buy one bag every time they shop - is that better than the 4 they were getting before, as people might bring them occasionally? (I had a short look, but couldn't find any numbers to the number of times the 15p bags in sainsburys have to be reused, or the number of times it's estimated people reuse them).
Punitive measures ("we should charge $1-2 for a bag") are counter-productive because the harm to society actually exceeds the benefit to society. We are not trying to eliminate every plastic bag at any cost. This is not a plastic bag crusade. The goal cannot be absolutism, it must be based on efficient market economics where the new regulation actually benefits society.
Many, if not most supermarkets in the UK no longer have single-use bags at all. The 5p charge has become irrelevant because there are no longer any such bags.
BUT now they have reusable plastic bags, that are much sturdier and thus made of more plastic, that they sell for 10p.
Most people do bring their own reusable bags with them but some don't, and as said sometimes you simply did not plan to shop and simply don't have a bag with you. In such cases people end up paying 10p for these reusable bags and probably throw them away.
Therefore, I think that single-use bags are still have a valid use: Sometimes you need a bag just for this one time and it would be best if such a bag could use the least material possible. They don't have to be plastic.
The more expensive price is intended at ensuring that people buy them only in emergency cases. Reusable bags should also be sold for more than 10p so that people care enough to actually keep them for a long time.
Note also that the article mentions statistics about single-use bags. Those 10p bags are not single-use so don't appear at all in the figures! A cynic would suspect supermarkets have found a loophole here...
It's really not hard. I have a couple of bags in my laptop bag and always carry a reusable folding bag in my jacket. We have a few in the boot of the car. That accounts for 90% of time I might need one.
you must shop frequently.
I shop 1 to 2 times a month, and buy a large qty when I shop. I absolutely despise going to the store. It is not uncommon for me to need 20+ bags per shopping trip
When I go there are also often people that with 2+ carts, having had to wait in line behind such people using the reusable bags it increased the check out time by a factor of at minimum 2, and sometimes 5x what would be normal due to people attempting to shove as much as they can in a limited number of bags, and they often times have far fewer bags than are need which delay's everyone as they mess around with moving things to maximize space
1. I do not trust them to pick out produce for me
2. They do use plastic bags, we have no taxes or prohibition on the bags here
3. I am not willing to pay the Delivery Fee + Tip. Food prices are high enough as it is