A bigger question is how many “bags for life” are being sold still.
A lot of supermarkets no longer sell single-use bags at all, instead selling bags for life, and I seem to see a lot of those bags in litter bins and so on. I think some people are treating bags for life as single-use bags, and that can’t be good!
Personally, I’ve been using the same set of sturdy bags for life for several years now, it just takes a tiny bit of planning to remember to take them along.
It’s still not enough though. I see middle aged people at the till each week still buying bags for life 5-10 at a time. And I flat out refuse to believe that they don’t already have some.
Supermarkets should only be selling hessian bags. :/
[Edit] Cloth/cotton bags as well.
10p? Did it go up? Iv only ever heard and paid 5p.
I’ve never seen a single use style bag in years, 20% seem very small percentage
There should be more companies using the green compostable bags Aldi use. I take those if shops have them, can use them for the food bucket they are a lot more useful.
You see so many bags for life floating about and in bins, they almost seem pointless nowadays.
I live in a neighbourhood with a lot of people on low income and yet I see most of them getting single use plastic bags every time they shop. Meanwhile I only use my own grocery bags and I have a good income…
I just got a couple of decent sized insulated bags from Amazon
They pay for themselves if you regularly buy bags and throw them away
Why don’t we stop producing them entirely? If we give people enough notice so that they can sort their own bags in good time, then we can do away with them. Or is it because they make money as another revenue stream, so we’re not really interested in reducing their use, just charging more for the privilege.
I just threw away 150 ‘bags for life’ that had accumulated in a cupboard.
I wish those new Iceland bags were part of those 20% because these new clear bags suck.
Are retail staff still having to deal morons making a scene about having to pay for a bag? Glad I don’t have to deal with that shit anymore.
They shouldn’t be available full stop, one time do forgetting your reusable bags and struggling to carry stuff and you wouldn’t do it again. This is good news but still nowhere near enough
They don’t even have single use carrier bags in the supermarkets I’ve been to recently, not for any price. How is it only 20%?
As I’ve said for years, if you want people to stop doing something/using something, raise the price. Same goes for junk food, alcohol, etc. These thinks used to be an occasional treat. A recent question asked on here recently had the majority of replies saying they had two takeaways a week, that’s not an occasional treat
Just charge the morons 50p per bag. Increase the heavier duty ‘for life’ bags to about £3. That should cut down consumption a lot more.
Only 20%? I don’t think I’ve seen anyone use plastic bags since the charge came in.
Why do plastic bags exist? Regardless of single use or not, they should all be paper.
Such a small % it’s hardly been worth it. No one is factoring in the plastic that’s used in the far heavier “forever” bags when punching these numbers anyhow, which is probably at least 20-30 x more plastic than the thin bags they’re “replacing”.
Oh nice, so that’s the planet saved then
Was it worth 9 grand uni fees?
Only 20%, very disappointing. This just doesn’t seem right surely it’s far more than that.
We should also be concerned about their bags for life. Most are not recyclable.
But are we actually using less plastic? The new bags are great and durable but I suspect most people just buy a new one each time rather than re using. Has this resulted in less plastic use and more recycling of plastic material?
Does anyone know?
In the old days we used to take our own bags and shopping carts, and we used glass instead of plastic. Then we moved away from glass because little pricks kept on smashing them and glassing each other, and it was cheaper. I don’t see how this gesture really amounts to much more than a great excuse for supermarkets to rake in more profit. A 20% drop in use is still going from an overall loss to a decent profit on the remaining 80%.
And now people have to purchase single use garbage bags on a roll
Not according to neighborhood fences and trees.
Remember when bags were free? Now they are paper and cost 40p a bag. Supermarkets are laughing as you pay more for something that costs them less while doing their job for them at a self service checkout.
Even so called bags for life should be made £1 or 2 per bag. People still buy and discard them like crazies
I still take the single use bags for free at the self checkout. I’m not paying for that stuff.
when they introduced the charge they also changed the bags in the supermarket at the same time. theyre much thicker now than the old thin ones that would cut into your hand if you put heavy stuff in them.
now, i know almost nothing about the types of plastic they use for each type of bag so i may well be wrong here. but it seems to me that the new bags are 2-3 times as thick so use 2-3 times as much plastic. so if theres only a 20% reduction on the number, but the bags use twice as much, isnt that a net increase of the amount of plastic used?
30 comments
A bigger question is how many “bags for life” are being sold still.
A lot of supermarkets no longer sell single-use bags at all, instead selling bags for life, and I seem to see a lot of those bags in litter bins and so on. I think some people are treating bags for life as single-use bags, and that can’t be good!
Personally, I’ve been using the same set of sturdy bags for life for several years now, it just takes a tiny bit of planning to remember to take them along.
It’s still not enough though. I see middle aged people at the till each week still buying bags for life 5-10 at a time. And I flat out refuse to believe that they don’t already have some.
Supermarkets should only be selling hessian bags. :/
[Edit] Cloth/cotton bags as well.
10p? Did it go up? Iv only ever heard and paid 5p.
I’ve never seen a single use style bag in years, 20% seem very small percentage
There should be more companies using the green compostable bags Aldi use. I take those if shops have them, can use them for the food bucket they are a lot more useful.
You see so many bags for life floating about and in bins, they almost seem pointless nowadays.
I live in a neighbourhood with a lot of people on low income and yet I see most of them getting single use plastic bags every time they shop. Meanwhile I only use my own grocery bags and I have a good income…
I just got a couple of decent sized insulated bags from Amazon
They pay for themselves if you regularly buy bags and throw them away
Why don’t we stop producing them entirely? If we give people enough notice so that they can sort their own bags in good time, then we can do away with them. Or is it because they make money as another revenue stream, so we’re not really interested in reducing their use, just charging more for the privilege.
I just threw away 150 ‘bags for life’ that had accumulated in a cupboard.
I wish those new Iceland bags were part of those 20% because these new clear bags suck.
Are retail staff still having to deal morons making a scene about having to pay for a bag? Glad I don’t have to deal with that shit anymore.
They shouldn’t be available full stop, one time do forgetting your reusable bags and struggling to carry stuff and you wouldn’t do it again. This is good news but still nowhere near enough
They don’t even have single use carrier bags in the supermarkets I’ve been to recently, not for any price. How is it only 20%?
As I’ve said for years, if you want people to stop doing something/using something, raise the price. Same goes for junk food, alcohol, etc. These thinks used to be an occasional treat. A recent question asked on here recently had the majority of replies saying they had two takeaways a week, that’s not an occasional treat
Just charge the morons 50p per bag. Increase the heavier duty ‘for life’ bags to about £3. That should cut down consumption a lot more.
Only 20%? I don’t think I’ve seen anyone use plastic bags since the charge came in.
Why do plastic bags exist? Regardless of single use or not, they should all be paper.
Such a small % it’s hardly been worth it. No one is factoring in the plastic that’s used in the far heavier “forever” bags when punching these numbers anyhow, which is probably at least 20-30 x more plastic than the thin bags they’re “replacing”.
Oh nice, so that’s the planet saved then
Was it worth 9 grand uni fees?
Only 20%, very disappointing. This just doesn’t seem right surely it’s far more than that.
We should also be concerned about their bags for life. Most are not recyclable.
But are we actually using less plastic? The new bags are great and durable but I suspect most people just buy a new one each time rather than re using. Has this resulted in less plastic use and more recycling of plastic material?
Does anyone know?
In the old days we used to take our own bags and shopping carts, and we used glass instead of plastic. Then we moved away from glass because little pricks kept on smashing them and glassing each other, and it was cheaper. I don’t see how this gesture really amounts to much more than a great excuse for supermarkets to rake in more profit. A 20% drop in use is still going from an overall loss to a decent profit on the remaining 80%.
And now people have to purchase single use garbage bags on a roll
Not according to neighborhood fences and trees.
Remember when bags were free? Now they are paper and cost 40p a bag. Supermarkets are laughing as you pay more for something that costs them less while doing their job for them at a self service checkout.
Even so called bags for life should be made £1 or 2 per bag. People still buy and discard them like crazies
I still take the single use bags for free at the self checkout. I’m not paying for that stuff.
when they introduced the charge they also changed the bags in the supermarket at the same time. theyre much thicker now than the old thin ones that would cut into your hand if you put heavy stuff in them.
now, i know almost nothing about the types of plastic they use for each type of bag so i may well be wrong here. but it seems to me that the new bags are 2-3 times as thick so use 2-3 times as much plastic. so if theres only a 20% reduction on the number, but the bags use twice as much, isnt that a net increase of the amount of plastic used?