The Welsh Assembly Government’s (WAG) decision to lower the compulsory carrier bag charge from 7p to 5p will help it avoid what would have been an embarrassing environmental blunder, according to The British Retail Consortium (BRC).
The BRC has consistently campaigned against compulsory bag charging and remains opposed to its introduction. The WAG is determined to press ahead with charging despite the significant reductions in bag use which retailers have and continue to deliver without it. The BRC has worked with WAG to ensure the charge does not lead to unintended environmental harm.
The WAG will introduce compulsory carrier bag charges in October 2011. The 7p charge it initially planned would have made single use carrier bags 2p more expensive than some bags-for-life. The BRC pointed out that, while such a move would increase take-up of bags-for-life, an unintended but inevitable consequence would be a massive increase in the number of customers taking the thicker, heavier bags-for-life but treating them as single-use bags rather than re-using them. This would be bad news for the environment because each bag-for-life contains up to eight times as much material as a single-use carrier bag.
Bob Gordon, BRC head of environment, said: “Charging less for a bag-for-life appears, on the surface, to be a good way to get people to use them. But it would have encouraged customers to treat bags-for-life as disposable, which we need to avoid. There is more material in a bag-for-life and if it is taken home and thrown away, immediately its environmental impact is up to eight times greater than that of a single-use carrier bag. That’s the opposite of what we’re trying to achieve.
“You can’t shift consumer behaviour simply by legislating on charges. As we’ve always said, the key to reducing the environmental impact of carrier bags is education and persuasion rather than financial penalties. Welsh retailers have already achieved a 50% reduction in bag use since 2006 by encouraging customers to reuse their bags. We’re confident that trend would continue without the introduction of a compulsory national carrier-bag charge.”
The BRC welcomed the WAG’s decision to delay the introduction of the compulsory carrier bag charge from April to October 2011. This will give retailers much needed time to implement the scheme.
Source: The British Retail Consortium (BRC)
