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.
It’s heartening to see that a small change can make such a big difference. Good luck trying to get the Tories to take that message onboard though.
The county north of the one I live in decided to just ban them completely. So the big chain store that used to have free paper or plastic bags switched to charging for the paper bags.
This seems like such a better idea.
I was in Maine recently and they charge for bags there. At Walmart, the self checkout staff member was also selling bags to the people who needed them, in addition to monitoring everything else that happens at self checkout.
They have a lot of self-checkouts in the UK - there’s a member of staff on hand to help and they usually dish out bags although in some places you can just grab and scan a bag. If you wanted to not pay for one you could but the staff member and cameras are watching so it isn’t all relying on honesty.
In Canada we just fully banned plastic bags. Walmart just doesn’t offer any bags at self checkout anymore besides the reusable ones. It’s kind of annoying if you forget to bring bags but it’s not a huge deal. If I’m walking I’ll just fill my personal grocery cart, or if I’m driving I’ll just throw everything loose in my car. If I do need a bag I’ll just spend $0.25 on a reusable bag.
It’s really not a big deal like a lot of people expected
Self serving checkouts ask you how many bags you want and charge for them in the UK. I have seen a growth in adults using backpacks, it wasn’t the norm before the bag charge.
Reminder that the biggest by far source of micro plastic in the air we breathe comes from tires. And there is zero research being done to find an alternative
It’s second to synthetic textiles
Edit. in the ocean
https://www.horiba.com/int/scientific/resources/science-in-action/where-do-microplastics-come-from/
Metal tires and metal roads. Kind of slippery, so we might need to make some sort of ridges to guide our vehicle’s direction. Stopping will still be hard, but if we just lock cars together and do it all at once it might be feasible.
I see your from feddit.nl, which makes your comment make sense, but you really need to realize that in many places in the world, the way the town’s and cities were built, it’s just impossible to implement public transit, and biking isn’t really an alternative.
Or places where public transit is a thing, it is really inconvenient.
My girlfriend can drive to work in 30 minutes. Taking the bus takes her over an hour. So instead of a 1 hour drive each day, she’s on the bus for 2.5 hours + waiting + the inconvenience of the buses not being on schedule + the buses shutting down at midnight
It’s great if you can commit an extra 1.5 hours every day just to sit on a bus, but she can’t. Not to mention that’s just going to work. If she needed to stop by for groceries, pet food, doctors appointments, etc, she’s adding an insane amount of time in between by having to switch buses.
I know cars are bad, but going to work + running errands legit wastes a good 3+ hours vs taking a car. That’s a massive chunk of wasted time. She has shit she needs to do at home, she can’t spend a quarter of her day sitting on public transit.
When the petrol car ban comes in, this could take care of itself as everybody finds themselves priced out of driving.
We’ll need a really good public transport system to replace it, but we won’t get that either because we’re too poor to care about.
A lot of people are already priced out of driving. We need to be building that public transport network, along with active transport infrastructure and better land use anyway.
@Blackmist @mondoman712
It isn’t a ban, there are huge numbers of them, of which less than a tenth are new any year.
That tenth of new car buyers can keep last year’s car, or buy a second hand car, but these are new car buyers, they’ll buy a new EV, mostly, or their firm will.
2,3,4…10 owners down the line, look forward to a used EV coming your way, a couple…10 years after no new petrol cars are made.
@Lemmylaugh @Emperor
The tire companies researched and innovated for EV tyres, and that reduces shedding.
I honestly don’t even usually want a bag.
But it’s the default and I’m too lazy to tell them I don’t need one every time. Making it not the default is plenty.
