<
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/31/government-urged-to-repeat-success-of-plastic-bag-charge>
"Environmental campaigners have called on the government to learn from its own
successes after official figures showed the use of single-use supermarket
plastic bags had fallen 98% since retailers in England began charging for them
in 2015.
Annual distribution of plastic carrier bags by seven leading grocery chains
plummeted from 7.6bn in 2014 to 133m last year, the Department for Environment,
Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said on Monday.
Rebecca Pow, the minister for environmental quality and resilience, said the
policy had “helped to stop billions of single-use carrier bags littering our
neighbourhoods or heading to landfill”. The government claimed the average
person in England now bought just two single-use carrier bags a year from major
retailers.
Campaigners welcomed the finding but said the statistic did not account for all
types of plastic bag. They also questioned the timing of the announcement, made
as experts said plans for 100 new North Sea oil and gas wells, announced the
same day by the prime minister would “send a wrecking ball through the UK’s
climate commitments”.
A 5p charge for carrier bags was introduced in English supermarkets in 2015. In
2021, the charge was increased to 10p and extended to all businesses. Since
then, the number of plastic bags used across all retailers had fallen 35%, from
627m in 2019-20 to 406m in 2022-23, Defra said."
Via
Future Crunch:
<
https://futurecrunch.com/good-news-breastfeeding-trachoma-iraq-golden-lion-tamarin-brazil/>
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
