Government highlights drop in ‘single-use’ carrier bag sales, but environmentalists criticise ‘misleading’ data
Sales of ‘single use’ carrier bags in England have fallen by 20% after a 10p charge was brought in last year, the government has said.
A 5p carrier bag charge was introduced in England in 2015, which was then doubled to 10p in April 2021.
Data from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) shows that carrier bag usage in England has decreased by 97% since the carrier bag tax was introduced in 2015 – a drop of 20% since the tariff doubled last year.
Defra says the average person in England now buys around three carrier bags a year, down from 140 in 2014.
But environmentalists argue that this figure is misleading, as supermarkets today only sell ‘bags for life’, which are not included in the figures.
Environment Minister Steve Double said: “Our plastic bag charge has ended the sale of billions of single-use 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 single-use plastic bans and introducing the deposit return scheme for bottles to fight back against littering and drive up recycling rates.”
Greenpeace has criticised the government’s data as misleading, due to the exclusion of bags for life from the figures.
Research published by the environmental campaigners found that 1.5 billion bags for life were sold by supermarkets in 2019 – equating to almost 57 bags per household for the year – more than one ‘bag for life’ used each week.
“When the government congratulates themselves on the single-use plastic bag charge, what they fail to mention is the enormous increase in the purchasing of so-called ‘bags for life’,” says Greenpeace UK political campaigner Megan Corton Scott.
“Because these bags for life are thicker and more durable, they have a far greater environmental impact both in production and how they break down, and the shift to bags for life saw supermarkets increase the amount of plastic they use,” she adds.
