By Michael Smith (Veshengro)
After a number of years of decline, the use of plastic bags by shoppers in the United Kingdom has risen again in 2010, so government authorities said.
Usage had had gone down by 40 percent after 2006 when the government, retailers and environmental advocates led a campaign to cut down on the 11 billion plastic bags Britons used annually.
But last year more than 6.8 billion were used, which is an increase of 5 percent from 2009, the government's Waste and Resources Action Program (WRAP) said.
Part of the increase has been probably due to shoppers making more short trips to stores, rather than a single large weekly shopping trip, the British Retail Consortium said.
But the small increase should be considered in the context of the "massive" progress made since 2006, it said.
“It's encouraging to see the majority of consumers are continuing to reuse their carrier bags and are taking as few new bags as possible,” Bob Gordon, the consortium's head of environment, said.
“We urge customers to keep that up, particularly when changing shopping habits, including more trips to stores, present a challenge to maintaining the progress made in recent years.”
He rejected calls for a total ban or charges for bags, saying it could be a burden for shoppers in difficult financial times.
“The overall numbers remain the sort of result other environmental campaigns can only dream of,” he said. “But it's time to accept bags are not the be-all and end-all of environmental issues.”
The British Retail Consortium said that the increase has been probably due to shoppers making more short trips to stores, rather than a single large weekly shopping trip. But what feeble excuse is that?
When I was a child, growing up in the 1960s and 1970s our mothers and grandmothers did not go to the stores ever without their shopping bags and they did daily shopping trips. Neither did they ever send us children to the shops without handing us a shopping bag and those were all reusable, made from American cloth, vinyl, leather, etc. The plastic carrier bag, especially free, did not exist back then and no one had any problems.
The British Retail Consortium also seems to make light of the issue of the plastic bag when its spokesperson states that, after all, plastic bags are not the be-all and end-all of environmental issues. It is a shame to see such an attitude and it is even sadder when this comes from the so-called “head of environment” of the consortium.
British consumers are packing away their green credentials along with their weekly shop, as last year an increasing number of us bundled our purchases into single-use plastic carrier bags instead of seeking out environmentally friendly alternatives, it would appear, and the question is as to whether it really is due to the fact that they make more frequent trips to the shops, rather than the single weekly shopping one, and thus come from work and don't have a bag on them or whether it is a lot more.
In all honesty it is not difficult to have a reusable shopper or two on one's person when going to work and that at all time, be that in the briefcase, the rucksack or the whatever bag.
I believe that as long as shops have free bags and often simply pack the things you have bought, without even asking as to whether you want a bag or not, into plastic one-way bags, things are not going to change.
Should a charge of 5pence or 10pence (I would advocate the latter) be levied for plastic bags then, maybe, shoppers might rethink.
A good incentive would be also to give shoppers money back on their purchased when they bring their own reusable shopping bags. That is a better incentive still than one loyalty point per reused bag, as done at Sainsbury's.
© 2011
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