SHOPS could be forced by law to charge for handing out plastic bags unless they agree to impose the fees voluntarily, the Prime Minister warned yesterday.
In a hard-hitting message to supermarkets and corner shops, Gordon Brown said: "I want to make clear that if government compulsion is needed to make the change, we will take the necessary steps.
"We do not take such steps lightly – but the damage
that single-use plastic bags inflict on the environment is such that strong action must be taken."
The move came after Marks & Spencer announced it would charge 5p for each bag issued to food shoppers from 6 May.
The government's own marketing arm yesterday said it was stopping the use of plastic bags for promotional purposes with immediate effect. The Central Office of Information (COI) – which provides the vast bulk of government marketing and promotional material – said it would provide only reusable bags made of materials such as hemp or cotton.
Campaigners claim most of the 13 billion plastic bags given free to shoppers end up as landfill waste, taking an estimated 1,000 years to decay, thus damaging the environment.
Last year, Mr Brown struck a deal with British supermarkets to reduce the number of bags and increase their recycled content to cut the environmental impact by 25 per cent, but says more needs to be done.
The Prime Minister praised M&S and also highlighted the work of Ikea, which stopped single-use plastic bags last July, thereby reducing bag use by 95 per cent.
And he added that carrier bags were one of the most visible and easily reduced forms of waste, and shoppers, supermarkets and the government all had to "accept our own responsibility for ending the environmental damage we are causing".
Downing Street did not give a timescale for legislation to force shops to cut down on plastic bags. But last night Neil Young, managing director of Simpac, one of Scotland's leading plastic bag distributors, said jobs would be lost and the environmental benefits of reducing plastic bag consumption were flawed.
He said: "We have 140 staff and are a major employer in Thornliebank in Glasgow. Unfortunately there is the likelihood that jobs will have to go.
"UK-wide this could mean the loss of thousands of jobs in plastic bags and storage. To give an idea of the impact – a 40ft container holds five million supermarket bags, whereas the same space will only hold 150,000 paper carrier bags.
"The facts are being ignored and the whole thing has become a political football. The Scottish Parliament spent £2 million looking at taxing plastic bags. An all-party commission concluded there was no environmental benefit in doing that."
Robin Harper, a Green Party MSP, said that while the campaign to get rid of disposable plastic bags was "picking up pace" there was a need to get rid of all the disposable plastic packaging "foisted on customers".
COMPLETE BAN 'THE ONLY SOLUTION'AN OUTRIGHT ban on plastic carriers is the only solution to the scourge of bags in streets and hedgerows, it was claimed yesterday.
A wholesaler of recyclable polypropylene "bags for life" said Britain should follow the example of similar bans in India, Kenya and Taiwan and that Marks & Spencer's bag-charging initiative was not enough.
Chris Amos, the director of Reusabags, said: "While I welcome M&S's decision to charge for plastic bags – it is simply not enough.
"Many customers will still accept plastic bags. A better solution would be to only offer environmentally friendly non-woven polypropylene bags. One bag can be reused limitless times, saving on the use of hundreds of plastic bags."
