Coinciding with the UN's World Environment Day yesterday, the Swedish-owned chain stopped offering free carrier bags, charging 5p per bag until the current stock has been used up.
” The UK is addicted to plastic bags, and we are paying a high price for this in environmental terms. “
– Charlie Browne, IKEA UK
Money from the levy is to be donated to regeneration charity Community Forests.
From September, the company has said it will use biodegradable carrier bags – and increase the charge faced by shoppers to 10p per bag.
As a third strand to its shopping bag initiative, IKEA has dropped the prices charged for its strong re-usable blue bags to cost price – a cut from the 1.25 charged per bag in 2001 to just 25p.
Pilot
Last year, IKEA gave away 32 million bags – a drop in the ocean compared to the 17 billion given away by all UK retailers every year. But a pilot of the new bag-charging structure at IKEA's Edinburgh store has seen the consumption of bags there fall by 90% – raising 10,000 for local causes through the 5p levy.
Announcing the nationwide adoption of the plastic bag levy, IKEA UK environment manager Charlie Browne said: “This move may prove controversial with some customers, but we really hope people will stick with us, and realise that we are doing this to try to help the environment.
“The UK is addicted to plastic bags, and we are paying a high price for this in environmental terms.”
The furniture chain's intended switch to biodegradable plastic carrier bags comes following a similar pledge by supermarket giant Tesco earlier this year. The pledge by Tesco led to criticisms that it did not understand environmental issues, with the claim that biodegradable bags generate greenhouse gases when ending up in landfill (see letsrecycle.com story).
Praise
But yesterday's announcement by IKEA brought praise from national politicians, with Conservative leader David Cameron commenting: “Ikea's pledge to reduce the number of plastic bags leaving their stores by 20 million should be praised and encouraged”, while Liberal Democrat environment spokesman Chris Huhne also welcomed the move.
Mr Huhne called on the government to consider some kind of national scheme, saying: “The Government should look again at introducing some form of plastic bag tax or charge for the whole country, which will make supermarkets and consumers think twice before they give away and use plastic bags in the first place.”
A spokesman for Defra said he was not aware of any consideration by the Department of a possible plastic bag levy.
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