The bag charging debate

Retailers in England as well as the government are coming under increasing pressure to introduce a charge for single use carrier bags, as all other parts of the UK either have a charge in place or are planning one.

A new Break the bag habit campaign led by the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England is aiming to turn the screw on the government and at least win a commitment from Chancellor George Osborne that the Treasury will carry out an assessment of the pros and cons of a bag levy in England. With a fair wind, they hope that they can persuade the Chancellor to include the assessment in a list of tasks to be announced in the Autumn Budget Statement due in or around November.

Retailers have not recently argued strongly against a charge being levied in England. Instead they have usually taken the stance that there are more important issues to tackle such as looking at the whole life environmental impact of products. Some of this work is being undertaken through the Courtauld Two deal with the Waste & Resources Action programme which concludes in December this year.

On carrier bags, the retailers are represented by the British Retail Consortium which provides a united front for them although there are known to be some members who are keener on a charge than others. M&S, for example, is said to be keen while some of the large supermarket chains are less so.

Now, however, it is understood that the issue has gone so far that the retailers generally are almost accepting that a charge is inevitable within a few years although they maintain their view that bags are not the great environmental issue some believe they are.

Symbolic

The BRC said earlier this summer: “Plastic bags account for a fraction of one per cent of household waste and the amount of new plastic being used in today’s bags is half what it was in 2006. They have a symbolic status but their impact on the environment is much smaller than other things which retailers are turning their firepower on. For example, retailers are leading members of a new forum which will reduce the carbon footprint of thousands of everyday products, between them responsible for around 30 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

However, they are keen, the BRC told letsrecycle.com, to ensure that if a system were to be considered, that it was more similar to the Welsh scheme than that proposed for Northern Ireland with consistency too with the Scottish proposal. This is because dealing with different schemes could cause extra costs and difficulties with some saying that there might even be unintended environmental consequences in terms of transport and communications.

So far the UK government has not bowed to the pressure to consider a plastic bag charge in England. And, were it to opt for a charge it would have to swallow the fact that it has adopted a policy of cutting red tape rather than bringing in new laws. Just over a year ago, Defra reacted to myth bust the Daily Mail on its report claiming the Government has u-turned on plans to introduce deposit funds on drinks containers and force stores to charge for carrier bags.

Trust

The truth, according to Defra, was that neither the coalition agreement nor the Defra business plan stated that we would implement these specific actions. We want to minimise waste and move from being a throw-away society but we need to trust people to do the right thing and dont want to batter them with rules and regulations.

But, since last summer two things have changed. One is that the Welsh single-use carrier bag charge has proved a success and the second is that the number of carrier bags in England went up rather than down last year according to the most recent set of figures.

These are produced by WRAP which is at pains to distance itself from a controversial topic. The data published in July 2012 found that a total of 8.0 billion thin-gauge bags were issued in the UK in 2011, which represents a 5.4% rise compared with 2010 (7.6 billion). The figures revealed a 22% fall in Wales, a 7.5% rise in England, an 8.1% rise in Northern Ireland and no significant change in Scotland over the same period.

However, compared with 2006, when WRAP first began gathering this data, there has been an overall decline of 35% from the 12.2 billion 2006 baseline. (Over this period, the population rose by 1.5 million in England to 52.2 million).

Wales

The Welsh scheme, which has emerged as the potential favourite model should a scheme be proposed in England, differs from Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland is taking a more complex approach with a 5p levy on single use carrier bags from April 2012 rising to 10p a year later. Also in 2013, multi-use carrier bags will attract a fee of 10p.

By contrast, Wales introduced a levy for single use carrier bags (plastic and paper) on October 1 2011 of 5p per bag and is not imposing a levy on multi-use bags (often known as Bags for Life).

And recent research on the first six months of the scheme has provided positive results. It has found, according to the Welsh Government, that the charge has helped to increase own bag use in Wales (from 61% to 82%).

Now Scotland will be bringing in its proposals, which are similar to those for Wales, while the main focus of attention is on the Treasury and Defra to see if they do opt for a levy in the face of pressure from the CPRE and others.