Remember your carriers – Tesco scraps the 5p bag
THE FLIMSY 5p carrier bag could soon become a thing of the past as Tesco has announced it is scrapping its cheapest bags, instead forcing shoppers to buy a “Bag for Life” at twice the price.
From August 28, Britain’s biggest retailer will stop selling so-called “singleuse” bags, meaning customers who forget to bring their own will have to buy the more expensive 10p bags.
However, online shoppers will still have their shopping delivered in 5p bags – unless they opt for a “bagless delivery”, which more than half (57 per cent) of customers now choose.
While some customers may be angered by the decision, which will force them to pay more if they forget their regular shopping bag, others may be pleased to see fewer bags being used.
The move follows a successful 10week trial in Aberdeen, Dundee and Norwich, where Tesco found that customers bought significantly fewer bags when only pricier bags were offered.
Matt Davies, chief executive of Tesco UK, said: “The number of bags being bought by our customers has already reduced dramatically.
“Today’s move will help our customers use even fewer bags but ensure that those sold in our stores continue to fund thousands of community projects across the country chosen by customers. It’s the right thing to do for the environment and for local communities.”
In 2015 the Government introduced a 5p charge for single use carrier bags to discourage shoppers from using them, following reports that billions were ending up in the oceans and harming fish and animals.
Data released last year showed Britain had virtually banished plastic bags just six months after the Government introduced the charge.
According to figures released by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, shoppers were on track to use around 6 billion fewer single-use bags over the course of 2017.
The Marine Conservation Society said that the number of plastic bags being found on UK beaches has halved.
Since the law change for English stores, Tesco has handed out 1.5 billion fewer bags than it would normally have done over the same period, but it still sells 700 million 5p bags a year.
The thicker, reusable bags for life fall outside the new law, leaving the company under no obligation to give anything to good causes, but Tesco said it continues to support environmental charities. The Government ordered major retailers in England to stop giving away single use bags in October 2015, and ordered the proceeds from a 5p charge to go to charity.
Retailers with 250 or more full-time or equivalent employees must charge the minimum of 5p for the bags they provide for shopping in stores and for deliveries, but smaller shops and paper bags are excluded.
Lidl replaced single use bags with 5p reusable ones in July and the Sainsbury’s 5p version is reusable and recyclable. Waitrose still offers 5p single use bags and 10p bags for life.
Thérèse Coffey, Environment Minister, said that there has been an 83 per cent fall in the number of single-use plastic bags taken from supermarkets since the 5p charge was introduced.
A“bag for life” is a curiously depressing idea. Since the bags in question are often soon lost, they seem a shoddy kind of memento mori. But life means life for the sturdy bags that Tesco will let us have in future: no more flimsy 5p plastic bags. With turtles and suchlike fauna in mind, it is discouraging the habit of our buying 637 million a year. We should not mind if there’s no plain shilling bag to put kitchen rubbish in or wrap up the children’s football boots. If one albatross is saved it’s all worthwhile. The trouble is that the bags are taken from us just as we’d all grown to depend on them. A generation or so back we used string bags, canvas bags, wicker bags even Gladstone bags. Yet it’s not the nature of the bags that has changed, so much as the nature of shopping – now such a hurried flit. We’re bag rich but time poor.