The single-use carrier bag charge is cutting plastic use and transforming how consumers shop, the UK Government says new figures reveal.
The 5p charge was introduced in supermarkets in 2015 and since then usage at the main retailers has dropped by 97%, the Government says, meanwhile, over £200 million has been voluntarily donated by retailers to good causes in that time.
As a result of the charge, the figures show the average person in England now buys around three single-use carrier bags a year from the main supermarkets, compared with around 140 in 2014.
The charge was last year increased to 10p and extended to all businesses. The Government says this has helped further bring the number of bags used down by over 20% from 627 million in 2019/20 to 496 million in 2021/22.
Nearly 5,000 stores nationwide have front-of-store collections where people can drop off their unusable bags once they reach their end of life.
Environment Minister Steve Double said: “Our plastic bag charge has ended the sale of billions of single-use bags, protecting our landscapes and ensuring millions of pounds are redistributed to worthy causes.
“There is much more to do to tackle the problem of plastic waste. That is why we are building on our single-use plastic bags and introducing the deposit return scheme for bottles to fight back against littering and drive up recycling rates.”
The number of single-use carrier bags reported by the main retailers was 197 million in 2021/22, down from 271 million in 2019/2020, the previous comparable year* – a reduction of 27%. Despite this being a drop from the 7.6 billion used in 2014 before the charge was introduced, the figures cannot be directly compared with other years because of circumstances relating to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Government says that, in 2021/22, retailers donated £10 million to good causes in education, arts, heritage, sports, environment, health, charity or volunteering sectors, or causes chosen by customers and staff.
Sector Specialist, Resource Management, at WRAP, Adam Herriot, said: “Flexibles remain one of the most common plastics in our bins, but just like pots tubs and trays we’re now at a point where the tide is turning on flexible plastics. Today, nearly 5,000 stores nationwide have front-of-store collections where people can drop off their unusable bags once they reach their end of life.
“So not only do we have fewer single-use shopping bags to worry about, we have somewhere convenient to put them when we go shopping to make sure they are recycled.”