Tories to extend the 5p plastic carrier bag levy to corner shops
CORNER shops will have to charge 5p for plastic bags as the Government bids to end Britain’s “throwaway culture”.
The Prime Minister will announce a 25-year environmental improvement plan tomorrow, including extending the bag levy to small businesses. At present retailers with fewer than 250 staff are exempt. Yesterday, Theresa May said the Tories had a “clear belief in conserving what is good”. It came as the alarming scale of plastic in the seas around Britain was laid bare after Storm Eleanor washed up tons of waste.
Experts said extreme tides, strong currents and gale-force winds last week had deposited plastic from the seabeds on to beaches.
WHEN Martin Dorey took his usual walk down Crooklets Beach in Bude after Storm Eleanor had blown across Britain, he was shocked.
The Cornish coastline was choked with plastic as far as the eye could see. Mr Dorey, who founded the #2minutebeachclean campaign to encourage walkers to spend a few minutes clearing the sand, said volunteers had collected two wheelie bins full of rubbish from just 100 yards of beach.
It means every mile of British coastline could have potentially contained enough plastic after the storm to fill 35 large refuse bins.
“Plastic turns up on every tide, every day,” said Mr Dorey, “But it’s been years since Crooklets was as bad as this. It was quite shocking. The strong onshore winds and high tides made it a perfect storm for beach plastic to wash up. It’s a universal and continuous problem. We put it in, and the ocean brings it all back to us.
“A lot of it is local, but I have had shotgun cartridges that have come from Canada and plastic discs from sewage treatment sites wash in from New England. If we don’t pick it up, it goes back into the ocean on the next tide. It harms wildlife and gets eaten by fish, which we then eat. So it will eventually come back to harm us, too.”
Similar mounds of plastic were washed up at other beaches in Cornwall, as well as in Wales.
Millions of tiny pieces of plastic washed up on Freshwater West beach in Pembrokeshire last week after rough seas. Nicknamed “mermaids’ tears”, the plastic pellets are usually the result of industry and domestic waste broken down by the waves.
Each year more than 300 million tons of plastic are produced globally, 10 per cent of which will end up in the sea. It is estimated that there is now a 1:2 ratio of plastic to plankton in the sea. The plastic is also swallowed by marine animals that cannot digest it and it has been shown that humans who eat sea- food ingest 11,000 pieces of microplastic each year. Yesterday, a ban on microbeads came into law and the Government is considering a plastic bottle return scheme, to encourage people to stop using single-use plastics.
Theresa May will make a major speech tomorrow setting out the Government’s 25-year environmental plan.
It will include plans to extend the 5p plastic bag levy to small retailers, which are currently exempt. The move has the backing of the Association of Convenience Stores.
Mrs May yesterday told her Cabinet the Government has “a clear belief in conserving what is good and standing up against the profligate use of resources, whether that is public money or natural resources”.
Michael Gove, the Environment Secretary, said that the Government is “determined to tackle the throwaway culture which plastics encapsulate”.
Calculations suggest that if nothing is done to stop the flood of plastic into the seas, it will outweigh fish by 2050.
Julian Kirby, a Friends of the Earth waste campaigner, said: “Plastic is demonstrably toxic to life, so plastic pollution must be tackled at source, with those who make and market it taking responsibility for reducing how much is produced and consumed.
“Those responsible for this horrific problem should be the ones taking responsibility for clearing it up.”