Letter: Time to charge for supermarket plastic bags
Wednesday 12th October 2011, 6:05AM BST.
Letter: David Cameron is threatening the shops and supermarkets that if they don’t reduce the number of plastic carrier bags given out he will bring in laws to force them.
It must be quite a cost to the shops to provide these bags. Surely the onus is on the customers, the lazy ones who don’t care about pollution of the planet, the cruel death of animals, birds and fish, and the unsightly litter everywhere.
Successive governments bang on about the problem but have done nothing about it.
The simple solution is to follow the example of the Irish who put a charge of 15p on the bags.
Ron Jones
Oswestry
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Whilst out in a welsh town at the weekend i found it quite disturbing to walk out of several large shops carrying just the goods I’d just bought! I looked like a shoplifter, I felt like a shoplifter and probably in time I will be accussed of being one. This may lead to extra costs for goods as people may try and sue for wrongfull arrest etc. Plastic bags are not great, but they at least enable people to go about their shopping without any embarrasment.
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Actually, I find that carrier bags make an excellent liner for my kitchen bin, and are also useful for bagging up some of my recycling waste as well.
Like a lot of people, I re-use mine and only the very torn bags with ripped handles end up in the general waste. They are also cheaper than buying ‘proper’ bin liners with inadedquate tying handles which are designed to be thin enough to just about hold their contents until such time as you take them out to the wheelie bin, and lo & behold, haemorrhage rank garbage all over your hallway carpet halfway there.
The solution is education, not punishment. Charging shoppers 15p for 2 grams of polythene (which simply isn’t worth a fraction of that cost) will just make shoppers go elsewhere for their groceries, not turn them into eco-warriors overnight.
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A very important subject in a year whereby we are fighting two conflicts, the economy about to go into a second recession coupled with growing world poverty.
Whatever next?
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why should supermarkets profit from the recycling boom,bad enough the government are.
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yeah totally agree, they are a menace and a mess
Keep it simple stupid
JUST BAN THEM
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Shops bought the idea of plastic carrier bags then it is up to them to charge or remove them thus people should take thier own shopping bags like my mum always did years ago.
Mr T why did you not take your own shopping bags then as you said you would not have looked like a shop lifter?.
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