THE GREAT BAG SWITCH
How charities are losing out as big supermarkets cash in on the bag for life
THE 5p charge for plastic bags adds more than £100 million a year to grocery bills and – depending on where you shop – the cost should help charities. But not all supermarkets play strictly within these rules.
Under laws introduced in England two years ago by the Department for Environment Food & Rural Affairs – a year after Scotland – supermarkets have to charge 5p for a single-use plastic bag.
Shops were also ordered to ‘give the proceeds of the scheme to good causes’.
But chains such as Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Lidl now only sell ‘bags for life’ and escape the single-use plastic bag legislation. It enables them to be less generous about giving money to charity – and to syphon off some proceeds as profit.
The Treasury also profits from each sale as supermarkets pay VAT on the price of each bag. For each 5p sale, 0.83p goes to the taxman.
But by being imaginative you can avoid this levy and instead learn to make more eco-friendly carrier bags and pick your own good causes to support.
Education consultant Julie Boyd has strong views on plastic bags. She says: ‘My view is a simple one: you should stop wasting money on plastic bags.’
The Nottingham-based education consultant suggests gathering together all those forgotten plastic bags at home and in the car boot and making something special.
She says: ‘With 30 reusable bags, you can knit a fabulous permanent grocery bag. Cut the old bags into strips five centimetres wide and stick them together – using an iron with Tefloncoated paper either side to avoid a sticky mess. The strands can then be crocheted into a bag.’
Plans on crocheting bags into carriers or knapsacks – as well as other creative ideas – are available on websites such as BagsBeGone, My Recycled Bags, Green Uses for Waste, Swatch17ntu and Julie Boyd.
The bag charge has been a huge success environmentally with nine billion fewer bags used since the ban. The number of bags found on beaches has halved since the new rules were introduced. Plastic bags can take as long as 1,000 years before they fully decompose.
Textile design graduate Rebecca Marshall often goes beachcombing near her home in Scarborough, North Yorkshire. She picks up plastic bags because they harm or kill marine life.
Rather than throw the bags away, she uses them in artwork.
The 22-year-old says: ‘Once you adopt the habit of not using disposable bags it can be personally rewarding.
‘For me it is less about saving money and more about helping the environment.’
Rebecca prefers to carry her shopping in natural unbleached cotton calico bags or jute bags spun from natural vegetable fibre that cost £5.
England introduced the 5p charge for single bags used in supermarkets in October 2015. Wales rolled out the levy in 2011 while in Northern Ireland shoppers have been charged at least 5p a bag since 2013. Smaller shops – those employing less than 250 staff – do not have to sign up to the levy while paper bags are also excluded from the rules.
A spokesman for the Department for Environment Food & Rural Affairs says: ‘The charge has been an enormous success with more than £95 million raised for good causes.’