Compulsory plastic bag charge from tomorrow...?
Ovalteenie
Posts: 24,169 Forum Member
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It's any shopping bag, not just plastic - paper & recyclable bags too. Minimum charge 5p which is kept by the retailer.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/oct/19/shoppers-pay-carrier-bags-scotland
I think that instead it should be incentive-based, eg 5p off your shopping if you don't need a bag.
And anyway the problem of plastic bags killing wildlife etc is primarily a littering problem.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/oct/19/shoppers-pay-carrier-bags-scotland
I think that instead it should be incentive-based, eg 5p off your shopping if you don't need a bag.
And anyway the problem of plastic bags killing wildlife etc is primarily a littering problem.
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I see carrier bags as a big advert for the shops so I have never felt as though I should buy them, I take poundland carriers to shop at M&S and I do recycle as much as possible and use reusable cloth bags when ever I can.
Edit - Ah, that's why: it doesn't affect England yet.
We have 5p plastic bags in NI and have had for over a year. I'm pretty certain the money goes to the government in this case though. The last lot of statistics I saw suggested that it was actually very effective in cutting down use of these bags, so that's a good thing. Besides, you get used to it pretty quickly. I was in York last year and tried to give the man in Sainsbury's a 5p for my bag. He looked at me like I was the biggest idiot in the world - I kinda was.
I didn't know about it until I read about it today. It's not been very well publicised.
What about the little bag the fries come in? Is that 5p too?
Cutting down on excess paper usage is also good for the environment.
I think they're exempt cause they can't close
They're hardly a carrier bag of the shopping type are they..
In five minutes you get used to taking a bag out to shop with you and it then costs NOTHING - so hardly a stealth tax. Only if they tax laziness.
You will soon see that it is a great idea and not remotely diffcult to live with.
But if you are really bothered save the last two or three bags you get free before the switch and put them in your coat pocket, handbag etc...they fold up easily. Then you have what you would have otherwise got needlessly over and over again every time you shop.
This is being done to stop that excessive use of free bags for everything and it is so easy to change your mentality just that tiny bit for the benefit of all. You will feel good about doing it too.
When it came in in Wales I checked the house and found there were 67 plastic bags littering various rooms.
You will be quite surprised how easy it is not to do that again and, of course, such numbers multiplied across every household in the UK shows why it was so necessary to do something to make people think about being sensible.
Even if I did, say, buy one plastic bag and re-used it alot, it can be easy to accidentally rip them as their obviously quite cheap, so they wouldn't last long. Maybe the answer is to get one or two of those bags for life instead and bring them all the time? something like that.
Better than reducing plastic bag usage actually!
It is incentive based you save 5p off your shopping if you remember to bring your own bag.
Very easy to avoid though. Just take your own bags.
As soon as such a charge came into being that affected them they will be outraged.
And give it time... 5p on this, 5p on that. It's a nice bonus for those hard-pressed retailers. 5p on alcohol for anti-alcohol measures, 5p on sugar sales for anti-sugar measures.
How can you argue when it's for such a "good cause"?