Plastic (not) Fantastic
Here’s my latest column from The Wharf…
It’s been a bad week for plastic bags. Marks & Spencer have announced that as of May 6 they’re going to charge 5p for every plastic bag customers need to carry food purchases. 5p isn’t going to break the bank but it will be interesting to see if consumers are prepared to cough up or whether some will see this as a moral crusade too far.
M&S reckon they hand out 394 million bags for food every year – which is a lot of unused carriers stuffed under the sink. They’ve already trialled the new charge in Northern Ireland and South West England and found that not only were customers prepared to pay, it also had an effect on how many bags they used – shoppers soon got in to the habit of reusing bags, getting “Bags for Lifeâ€? or bringing their own shopping bags. Indeed, M&S are handing out free bags for life in the run up to the 6 May charge.
It’s not only the posh chains that are doing the right thing though. Lowly Lidl, much loved by fans of German sausages and impossibly cheap lager have always charged for bags. Whether this is as part of a green policy or out of pure economics is unclear, and perhaps it doesn’t matter – the end result is that many customers leave Lidl with their shopping in their own bags rather than shelling out 3p a time for the branded carriers. Lidl also stock a wide range of organic veg and have recently introduced a Fairtrade section including chocolate and sugar, so top marks to them.
It remains to be seen whether other retailers follow Marks & Spencer’s lead or what impact it will have on their sales. In the meantime, there are plenty of brands hoping that the trend for reusable bags catches on. Love Your World produce reusable shoppers and also run campaigns to declare whole towns and businesses plastic bag free. So far they have run a successful Plastic Bag Free Dundee project and hope to expand to Edinburgh in the spring. In the long term they hope that it won’t just be cities that join in, but businesses and local communities – time for a Plastic Bag Free Wharf, anyone?
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