Bags of litter

I’D LOVE to know how Morrisons charges its customers the obligatory 5p for a plastic bag (Mail).

Every self- service checkout has mountains of their bags and customers appear to take as many as they need or want. Is anything being done about it? I don’t think the 5p charge is nearly enough.

It’s said that there’s been a massive decline in the use of bags since the charge was implemented, but we still see plastic bags used as rubbish bags, hanging from trees and in hedgerows and laybys.

As so many people use their cars to go to supermarkets, why do they need bags anyway? Couldn’t they just place the shopping in the basket or trolley, push the trolley to the car and place the shopping in the boot?

It would be deeply unpopular, but I reckon that a £5 charge per bag would deter most customers and make them think about other ways of carrying their goods home.

SUE SLOCOMBE, Llanon, dyfed. CHARGES on plastic carrier bags and deposits on plastics bottles don’t necessarily lead to less littering (Mail) and nor will reducing the number of plastic bags in circulation.

Beach surveys in Australia have shown that the lowest levels of litter were in Victoria where, unlike other states, there’s no deposit scheme for bottles but — significantly — a robust anti-litter educational campaign.

Products don’t litter but, unfortunately, some people do. We in the UK need a zero- tolerance approach to littering.

Behaviour needs to be tackled through innovative public educational programmes, more effective enforcement of fines and by improving the infrastructure for disposal and recycling.

I hope the UK Government will grasp this point when it publishes its proposal for tackling litter later in the year. BARRY TURNER, British Plastics

Federation, London EC2.