Bag charges cut use by over 20%

THE single-use plastic carrier bag charge has cut usage in England by more than 20% since 2019, according to the Government’s latest figures.

The charge, which was increased from 5p to 10p in May 2021 after first being introduced in large retailers in October 2015, now requires all businesses to charge customers for single-use plastic carrier bags.

According to the latest data published by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), the total number of bags used was down by over 20% from 627 million in the years 2019 to 2020 to 496 million in 2021 to 2022. England’s main retailers – Asda, Marks & Spencer, Morrisons, Sainsbury’s, the Co-operative Group, Tesco and Waitrose – sold 197 million singleuse plastic carrier bags in 2021 to 2022. This compared with 271 million single-use plastic carrier bags sold in 2019 to 2020, the last year before the Covid-19 pandemic, marking a reduction of 27%.

It was also a 97% reduction from the 7.64 billion single-use carrier bags handed out in England by the main retailers in 2014, before the charges were introduced, according to figures from the Waste & Resources Action Programme (Wrap) charity.

The Defra figures also showed that the average person in England now buys around three single-use carrier bags each year from the main supermarkets, compared with around 140 in 2014. Large retailers are now required by law to report certain information to Defra, including the number of single-use carrier bags sold under the charge.

Between 2021 and 2022, 42% of retailers also reported on how they chose to donate proceeds from the charge. These retailers reported donations of £10 million.

Environment minister Steve Double said: “Our plastic bag charge has ended the sale of billons of singleuse bags, protecting our landscapes and ensuring millions of pounds is redistributed to worthy causes.

“There is much more to do to tackle the problem of plastic waste. That is why we are building on our singleuse plastic bans and introducing the deposit return scheme for bottles to fight back against littering and drive up recycling rates.”

Adam Herriot, sector specialist, resource management at the Waste & Resources Action Programme (Wrap), said: “Flexibles remain one of the most common plastics in our bins, but just like pots, tubs and trays we’re now at a point where the tide is turning on flexible plastics.

“Today, nearly 5,000 stores nationwide have front of store collections where people can drop off their unusable bags once they reach their end of life. So not only do we have less single-use shopping bags to worry about, we have somewhere convenient to put them when we go shopping to make sure they are recycled.”