Environmental campaigners have known as on the federal government to be taught from its personal successes after official figures confirmed using single-use grocery store plastic baggage had fallen 98% since retailers in England started charging for them in 2015.
Annual distribution of plastic service baggage by seven main grocery chains plummeted from 7.6bn in 2014 to 133m final 12 months, the Division for Surroundings, Meals and Rural Affairs (Defra) stated on Monday.
Rebecca Pow, the minister for environmental high quality and resilience, stated the coverage had “helped to cease billions of single-use service baggage littering our neighbourhoods or heading to landfill”. The federal government claimed the typical particular person in England now purchased simply two single-use service baggage a 12 months from main retailers.
Campaigners welcomed the discovering however stated the statistic didn’t account for all sorts of plastic bag . Additionally they questioned the timing of the announcement, made as specialists stated plans for 100 new North Sea oil and fuel wells, introduced the identical day by the prime minister would “ship a wrecking ball via the UK’s local weather commitments”.
A 5p cost for service baggage was launched in English supermarkets in 2015. In 2021, the cost was elevated to 10p and prolonged to all companies. Since then, the variety of plastic baggage used throughout all retailers had fallen 35%, from 627m in 2019-20 to 406m in 2022-23, Defra stated.
Wales had launched a 5p cost in 2011, Northern Eire adopted go well with in 2013 and Scotland did so in 2014. Scotland and Northern Eire have since raised their fees to 10p and 25p respectively.
“This 98% discount in single-use plastic baggage reveals inserting a plastic tax on the level of sale is an efficient coverage for decreasing client plastic bag use,” stated Steve Hynd of Metropolis to Sea, which campaigns for an finish to the manufacturing of single-use plastics. However he stated the info didn’t embody gross sales of baggage for all times, nor did it break down the distribution between in-store procuring and residential supply.
The cost is one in every of a number of measures launched by the federal government to scale back the manufacturing of single-use plastics. In 2018 it banned microbeads in “rinse-off private care merchandise”, in 2020 got here restrictions on the availability of single-use plastic straws, drink stirrers and cotton buds, and in 2022 a tax was launched on plastic packaging that was not not less than 30% recycled. However campaigners stated different promised measures had been delayed.
Nina Schrank, the pinnacle of Greenpeace UK’s plastic marketing campaign, stated: “The success of the plastic bag cost reveals that when the federal government takes actual motion it will get outcomes and the general public will get on board. It’s ironic then for these figures to come back out simply as ministers are busy delaying important plans to deal with the scourge of single-use plastic.
“Each the deposit return scheme and new guidelines to make plastic producers contribute to clean-up prices, which shaped the important thing planks of the federal government’s waste technique, have been delayed till 2025. As an alternative of letting plastic polluters off the hook, ministers ought to usher in legally binding targets to pressure corporations to show off the plastic waste faucet on the supply.”
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Hynd stated much more wanted to be carried out. “This is only one small step in a for much longer journey to deal with plastic air pollution. To be thought-about international leaders in tackling plastic air pollution they should be setting themselves discount, refill and reuse targets and so they additionally should be implementing their very own insurance policies, similar to an all-in deposit return scheme, like they promised of their 2015 manifesto, and the long-awaited prolonged producer duty coverage.
“There’s apparent context right here, which is that they reannounced the success of the single-use plastic bag ban on the identical day that they unveiled a vastly harmful plans for 100 new oil and fuel licences.”
