News

Love them or loathe them, it seems there is no escaping the debate on carrier bags. Hardly a week goes by without a proposal to curb their use; from introducing taxes, to giving loyalty card points, to an all-out ban.

But no one can agree on the right course of action – and the government seems particularly confused (see below).

And it is not just the UK that is plotting their demise. The Chinese government, for example, will ban shops from handing out free plastic bags and ban lightweight bags entirely from 1 June onwards, while New York City passed a Bill in January requiring large stores to set up recycling programmes.

The success of any scheme is likely to depend on the support of the retail sector. At the moment, the supermarkets favour the carrot more than the stick: encouraging customers to reduce carrier bag consumption, rather than forcing them to.

Tesco, for example, offers Green Clubcard points to customers who reuse bags and Marks & Spencer gave away free Bags for Life during trials for a possible carrier bag charge. Whole Foods Market offers a range of reusable bags and will stop issuing single-use plastic bags in April.

“A ban would be a significant inconvenience to customers, and a tax would impose an extra cost,” says a spokesman for the British Retail Consortium (BRC).

There is, he says, a range of situations where the retailer needs to provide bags for its customers and where reusing a bag is not an option, such as for large items of clothing and spontaneous trips to the supermarket.

“Shoplifting is also on the increase, and people selling books, DVDs and small electrical items use bags to readily see if a customer has paid or not.”

Supporters of taxing single-use plastic carrier bags in the UK often point to Ireland for its achievements since introducing a levy of 10p (15 eurocents) per bag in 2002.

What is often omitted, however, is that Ireland uses more plastic now than before the ban, in primary and secondary packaging, according to the Carrier Bag Consortium (CBC).

Spokesman Peter Woodall explains: “Packaging’s primary role is protection and we’ve found lots of examples where products now have plastic wraps and a lot of trays are being used. Bulkier products, such as kitchen rolls, now have handles.”

Woodall is sceptical of China’s ban on lightweight bags, which is intended to encourage people to reuse heavier bags. “80% of bags are [already] reused,” he says.

The CBC has accused politicians and the popular media of “driving the mythology” about plastic bags. “There’s enormous confusion among consumers, but there’s also real danger to the environment.

Substitute products – both direct replacements and extra packaging – are driving greater environmental impacts,” says Woodall.

Green paper?
Paper bags appear to be a popular alternative to plastic, although they are also included in the London Local Authorities (Shopping Bags) Bill that is currently going through Parliament.

Manufacturer St Regis, part of DS Smith, is keen to promote the environmental credentials of its products that, it says, annually use up to 45,000 tonnes of waste paper from landfill. All the company’s bags are made from 100% recycled waste paper and are, themselves, completely recyclable.

However, London Councils, which is behind the Bill to ban single-use bags in London, is not convinced that paper bags are any better than plastic. “They are heavier, use more fuel to transport and give off methane when they decompose,” says a spokesman.

Compostable or biodegradeable plastics are another possibility, but they raise issues of sustainability.

A spokeswoman for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) says these materials should be explicitly mentioned on the bag. “The problem is unless people are aware of the plastic types, everything gets mixed together, and sending biodegradeable plastics to landfill is not good,” she says.
Michael Stephen, deputy chairman of Symphony Environmental Technologies, a manufacturer of oxy-biodegradable additives, says the focus ought to be on plastics that “degrade if they are not collected and are recyclable if they are”.

The CBC has called for more joined-up thinking on the issue and wants the government to carry out studies to say what definition is applied to every situation. “There’s lots of different terminology in use, and it’s not a black and white issue,” says Woodall.

But, whatever the future holds for the carrier bag, perhaps the bigger question is whether all the energy currently given to the issue would not be better diverted away from something that, after all, represents only 0.3% of the country’s landfill.

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OFF MESSAGE
Government policy on single-use carrier bags remains confused:
• In January, exchequer secretary Angela Eagle told Parliament the government was “actively considering” how best to phase out single-use carrier bags
• However, three days earlier, Joan Ruddock, environment minister, told the Commons that the government did not believe a tax on plastic bags would be effective and, as such, none was planned
• Speaking to Packaging News last month, a spokeswoman for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said there was “nothing wrong with plastic bags, the issue is single use: throwing them away is a waste of resources”