My god, an environmental policy that I can support
Dear Joan Ruddock,
I almost didn’t write you this letter today, seeing as I was laughing so hard after finding out that your job title is ‘Climate Change minister’. Once I had fully recovered, I set about reading through your proposals and it soon dawned on me that the government is putting forward an environmental policy that I actually support. Apparently, we should expect new legislation that will ensure shops no longer hand out single-use plastic bags for free – and I think this is a really good idea.
As a general rule, I don’t like ‘green taxes’. Alistair Darling has used these supposedly environmental taxes to raise a few million quid to plug the massive financial black hole that Labour have left us in. His policies have absolutely nothing to do with being green or environmentally friendly, which makes his stealth taxes even harder to accept. But, this time, you’re doing something rather unusual: you are putting forward a policy that will not give the Chancellor any freebies and might actually help clean up our streets. In February 2007, British retailers voluntarily committed themselves to cutting the use of plastic bags, but only Marks and Spencer decided to impose a charge (5p). Needless to say, supermarkets aren’t going to do anything that will seriously damage their business and handing out free shopping bags is a nice way to keep the customers happy.
My attitude towards plastic bags in shops is very simple. It’s lazy, very very lazy. Bring your own bags when you go shopping and stop relying on plastic bags that ultimately end up in landfill sites or blowing around the streets or ruining our beaches. Every shop in the country should be made to charge at least 50p for every type of bag they give away. Expecting people to change their ways by asking them nicely or asking supermarkets to be nicer to the environment in the absence of legislation is nearly always destined to fail. Hit shoppers where it hurts and then we’ll see who wants to keep being lazy and use plastic bags. The Treasury should receive no funds from this exercise, as all the 50p charges should remain with the retailers. To my mind, this represents a perfect example of where financial levers can be used to help clean up the environment without any nonsense about climate change, stealth taxes, unfair treatment or any other lame excuse.
Personally I think your suggestion of a 10p charge is far too low and won’t hit shoppers sufficiently hard. You should also be looking to mainland Europe for ways of incentivising companies to reduce the amount of packaging used by food and drink manufacturers, because this country has a disgraceful record for packaging that cannot be recycled or reused and inevitably ends up in a landfull site. The Conservatives may well be looking at these issues as they develop their manifesto and I suggest that you do the same – not because you want to win an election, but because it’s the right thing to do.
Yours sincerely,
A.Tory
The National Trust shops also charge for plastic bags too and it really annoys me when I get charged for them, as I did in M & S yesterday, because I have a car boot full of reusable bags. It’s difficult to remember unless all shops follow the same system. What amazes me about this is that because our government wasn’t brave enough to legislate on a plastic bag levy, shopkeepers and local communities are bringing in their own ban. What other issues has stirred this kind of people power reaction?
Nannyism gone mad – you need serious help!
Why is it nannyism to expect businesses to charge for what is just another product?
I think it’s great that towns such as Hebden Bridge and Kew have taken it upon themselves to impose a total ban (supported by the inhabitants) and clean up their own streets. I was shocked to hear that Tescos in Kew will be keeping plastic bags under the counter to give to anyone who asks, as apparently it is against company policy – against company policy to help reduce waste???
I agree with Ellee, it is much easier to remember to take the bags when every shop in the vicinity is completely bag free. Just as recycling would be much simpler if every council in the country collected it in the same way.
Sometimes a law for the whole country is a much simpler way of getting the effect you want – i.e. reducing landfill waste. People find it much easier to stick to rules if they apply to everyone in the country rather than recommendations in a certain postcode.
I think a charge is better than a ban, because there are times when you pop to the shops on your way home from work and don’t have a bag. I would be annoyed to pay 50p for a bag but would accept that it was my fault for not bringing one with me. If the retailers kept the cash they might be able to induce people in by cutting a price or two elsewhere – win, win.
Re excess packaging: I think it’s Sweden where the retailer is obliged to deal with any packaging returned by customers, which encourages the retailers to source products with less packaging or pass the packaging back to manufacturers.
I also think that there should be a deposit scheme for reusable containers so that we can get glass bottles back instead of those wasteful plastic ones.
We can go green without draconian measures and heavy taxes.
If the price of a plastic bag is high enough it should work as a deterrent. But I think that any profit made should be donated to an environmental organisation, such as the World Land Trust. M&S already donates plastic bag money to charity.
Reusable glass bottles would be a great way to reduce waste. It might be a step back in time to the days of BASS Lemonade – do they still do that? And joining forces with many developing countries such as Uganda, which already has this system on their fizzy drink and beer bottles, but it might just work and people are always stingy enough to want to get the money back.
Excessive packaging (i.e. Easter Eggs and bakery products) should be banned and that biodegradable stuff only found encasing organic fruit and veg should be used for the pesticide grown stuff as well.
I am concerned that councils, such as my own, will not take the recycled boxes if the contents reach the top but will lift countless bin bags. Surely this should be reversed to encourage vast recycling and reduce the waste that goes into bin bags. What kind of message are they sending out to people?!
What we really need is a change of attitude in people. Even sensible people cannot always be trusted to do the right thing. For example very few people turn their computers off when they leave the office becuase it wastes about 2 minutes in the morning. this is the kind of society we live in where punishments and rewards have to be doled out to get people to act more responsibly. The majority of people are lazy and just do not care. Sadly high taxes all too often work by changing this lazy attitude!
It was the head of Lidl UK GmbH who pointed out that there is no such thing as a free plastic bag. Tescos & Sainsbury’s etc just charge their customers indirectly through marginally higher pricing.
Anyway, in terms of economics it makes sense to make the marginal cost of plastic bags higher – much in the same way that to encourage people to drive less, you should reduce road tax and raise the cost of fuel (or start charging per mile, which is pretty much the same thing). The more each extra journey costs, the more people think seriously about which journeys they need. The more each extra plastic bag costs, the more people think about how many they need.
My family take the buggy shopping with us and fill it up. For larger shops we use the supermarket delivery services – which are available without any plastic bags at all. We don’t have a car, though.
“…this is the kind of society we live in where punishments and rewards have to be doled out to get people to act more responsibly. The majority of people are lazy and just do not care. “
Who exactly does society run for, if not the people?
If people truly are mostly ‘lazy and uncaring’, why should the minority who get a green glint in their eye decide they should force/encourage everyone else to fall into line?
I don’t want to walk around with a plastic bag all day on the offchance that I might want to but something. Particularly when the bag is either reused at home (some people use them as ‘pooper scoopers’ when walking the dog) and disposed of in the recycle bin that the council takes away.
This obsession with supermarket plastic bags is mere greenwash – meant to mark people out as having ‘done something’ while being a tiny, tiny part of the real problem.
I certainly wouldn’t ban plastic bags as, like Madeley said, they are just another product that can be sold by the shops. However, I agree with Ellee and Candid that people’s attitudes will not be change unless there is a clear movement from every retailer towards charging for bags and that will only happen through legislation.
Blue Eyes is also right to point out that we need better recycling facilities in addition to these measures, as the whole attitude towards packaging, rubbish, plastic bags and other related environmental issues is going to require one hell of a push – but it can work.
And no, this is not nannyism, it’s called looking after our environment. I take Julia’s point that plastic bags are only one small part of the problem, but they are part of the problem nonetheless (and a very visible part).
“However, I agree with Ellee and Candid that people’s attitudes will not be change unless…”
Might it not be better to question if ‘atittudes need to be changed’ at all?
If you start from the position that ’something must be done’, you are then committed to ‘do something’, even if only to be seen to do so. What ‘problem’ is caused by plastic bags – use of resources? Or litter?
Thee are mechanisms in place to resolve both of these things.
I can’t agree with Candid that people are essentially lazy and need coercion. That is the language of socialism.
I think people are essentially good, but the framework needs to encourage better behaviour.
Blue Eyes, actually I agree with Candid that when it comes to environmental issues, people are notoriously lazy because there is no historical reference for behaving in an environmentally friendly way, seeing as we are several light years behind many comparable countries when it comes to this area.
Obviously incentives are the best method to use and they should be put in place wherever possible when it comes to being ‘green’ and recycling etc, but sometimes people just need a kick up the butt when it comes to sorting out the environment and a 50p charge on all plastic bags would do precisely this.
Julia, plastic bags cause numerous problem and should therefore be directly addressed by legislation. Litter on the streets, litter on beaches, landfill (I think they take about 20 years or so to biodegrade, if at all), the serious difficulty in recycling them etc. There are no “mechanisms in place” to limit the widespread use of plastic bags, which are thrown away and left lying around (literally) in an alarmingly casual manner.
“Julia, plastic bags cause numerous problem and should therefore be directly addressed by legislation.”
Who did you get that from? Always check who is telling you something is a ‘problem’ – there’s nearly always a hidden agenda.
“Litter on the streets, litter on beaches, landfill (I think they take about 20 years or so to biodegrade, if at all), the serious difficulty in recycling them etc. “
There are existing laws and policies to deal with all of that. Why do we need new ones? Impliment the existing ones first!
Also, some plastic bags are indeed biodegradable – the local council provides them for ‘green waste’. I think they are made of cellulose.
“There are no “mechanisms in place” to limit the widespread use of plastic bags, which are thrown away and left lying around (literally) in an alarmingly casual manner.”
Again – existing litter laws should be used first.
“…actually I agree with Candid that when it comes to environmental issues, people are notoriously lazy because there is no historical reference for behaving in an environmentally friendly way…”
Rubbish! (sorry about the pun…)
Go back 40 years and we weren’t buried in litter – it didn’t exist in the first place (very little superfluous wrapping), people were brought up to not discard wrappings in the street and people were far less food-wasteful. Excess food was consumed as leftoevers or fed to pigs as slops.
The hygiene rules and regulations brought in by the EU are the main culprits in the excess wrappings and problems with disposing of food that we are experiencing now.
I’m sorry but I simply don’t understand how you fall back on the existence of current litter laws as justification for not doing anything about plastic bags. Obviously it’s not acceptable for people to drop litter and leave things on the street but it’s happening and we should be doing something about it. Paying people to pick up litter off the streets is dealing with the symptoms, whereas charging for plastic bags is dealing with the original cause of the problem.
And I have no idea how you can blame the EU for all this. If you compare this country to Sweden or Germany or many other countries, you will find that our littering problem is far worse and our recycling is far poorer – which makes it perfectly clear that the EU is not to blame.
Charge for plastic bags and put the appropriate incentivises and disincentives in place for food and drink manufacturers to cut down their packaging. The government has the power and the justification to do all this, but the retail lobbyists have got the better of them.
L – I meant that there is a big difference between encouragement and coercion. You will find that forcing anyone to do anything will just cause resentment and will probably be counter-productive. e.g. charging per kilo of waste will just result in more fly-tipping but paying people to recycle more will encourage people to do so.
“I simply don’t understand how you fall back on the existence of current litter laws as justification for not doing anything about plastic bags. Obviously it’s not acceptable for people to drop litter and leave things on the street but it’s happening and we should be doing something about it.”
We can. Under the existing littering laws.
Why aren’t we, and why are we proposing ‘new’ legislation…?
“I have no idea how you can blame the EU for all this. If you compare this country to Sweden or Germany or many other countries, you will find that our littering problem is far worse and our recycling is far poorer – which makes it perfectly clear that the EU is not to blame.”
Not always the EU per se, but how we here in the UK impliment those regulations. And do you want to pay the tax that they do in Sweden…?
Their levels of social care come at a cost.
“The government has the power and the justification to do all this, but the retail lobbyists have got the better of them.”
Better to let the Watermelons have the whip hand then…?
Blue Eyes, I don’t intend to force people not to buy plastic bags – it’s a matter of making them realise that those plastic bags have negative externalities that we all feel and therefore they should pay for them. The price of the plastic bags will in itself encourage people not to use them but still give them the option, which is why I’m totally against a ban on plastic bags.
Julia, much as I still disagree with you, I must congratulate you for being the first people on this blog to use the word ‘watermelons’.
“Julia, much as I still disagree with you, I must congratulate you for being the first people on this blog to use the word ‘watermelons’.”
Your search – site:http://lettersfromatory.wordpress.com watermelons – did not match any documents.
But that’s all about to change
I didn’t realise JuliaM was more than one person!
Me neither
I can’t agree with Blue Eyes that ‘people are essentially good’. Sadly this is a minority of people and the majority are incredibly lazy. Otherwise I wouldn’t have to walk around the office before I leave and take paper, bottle and cans out of normally bins (next to people’s feet) and drop them into one of the recycling bins – at least four steps away! And I wouldn’t have to turn off computers (as mentioned earlier).
People are all built up of those selfish genes and thus it is the rare few that are ‘good’. i.e. think about others etc. This kind of attitude only presents itself when entire communities, populations or countries are under threat – only then do we glimpse that ‘good’ behaviour.
Not sure that people are necessarily ‘bad’ for not recycling because as a nation we have never been brought up to appreciate the importance of recycling and looking after the environment. It’s a very recent phenomenon, which in itself is quite embarrassing but that’s just the way it is.
If the government puts the right measures in place, these attitudes will change over time but it is going to be a slow process.
Blue Eyes: “You will find that forcing anyone to do anything will just cause resentment and will probably be counter-productive..”
Candid:“…the majority are incredibly lazy. Otherwise I wouldn’t have to walk around the office before I leave and take paper, bottle and cans out of normally bins (next to people’s feet) and drop them into one of the recycling bins – at least four steps away! And I wouldn’t have to turn off computers (as mentioned earlier).”
Hmm, I think if I worked with Candid, I’d make sure not to recycle…
JuliaM – for once I find myself agreeing with you! My colleagues probably do it to spite me – although I am the tea monkey so you’d think they’d have some respect!!
Candid, I think your colleagues’ attitude towards energy consumption and recycling is pathetic. Obviously your employer is not concerned about reducing their energy bills or encouraging employees to recycle, which is just as bad.
“Obviously your employer is not concerned about reducing their energy bills or encouraging employees to recycle, which is just as bad.”
Well, to be fair, some companies run overnight updates to PCs via networks – it may be that the machines need to be left on for those?
As far as the recycling goes, why should the employer care? It isn’t (presumably) a business benefit to them to recycle. Make it one, and you might see a change, as Blue Eyes says, especially if the benefit is passed on to the employees.
Carrot is always better than stick, because too much stick breeds the ‘F*** you’ attitude that so many people now have towards the latest ‘green’ fad.
I don’t understand the debate at all.
If you go to M+S and buy a pair of pants you wouldn’t be expected to take your own bag and you won’t be charged for one.
But if you buy food, the most over packaged goods on the high street you would?
LFaT. Just imagine if you would a single bag of groceries. Lets take the staples.
Bread [in a plastic bag]
Eggs [cardboard box]
Cheese [in a plastic bag]
Butter [Plastic box]
Vegtables x 3 kinds [in a plastic bag]
Yoghurt [Plastic box]
Cereal [cardboard box]
Fruit [in a plastic bag]
The one USEFUL item, a container to put your containers into, is the one you are expected to supply yourself.
If you go to a shopping centre will you take plastic bags for all your purchases ?
If you go to NEXT will you have a bag for your shoes and shirts. Or Smith’s and take a bag for your books?
OK, its possible, but what’s the point?
What is the saving when everything comes in packaging anyway. Its inconvenience, dressed up as planet saving, conscious cleansing, guilt salving ECO-nomics.
The packaging is the problem, not the bag.
Can’t agree with you on this one Mr letters.
Real recycling is not about encouraging less, but reusing that which there is.
“Real recycling is not about encouraging less, but reusing that which there is.”
Not a view that I share.
This is the worldview that has got celebs planting trees to make up for their carbon emissions, when if they wanted to do something they should have just not made the emissions in the first place. (Not to mention the fact that many newly planted forests are wildly inappropriate for their environment, and it takes decades for them to even approach the worth of ancient woodland*)
Recycling quite obviously consumes more resources than not using excessive packaging etc. at all.
*Woodland Trust member speaking
I have a question. If there are no free plastic bags what shall I scoop dog poop with?
I agree with Asquith. As the motto goes – Reduce, Re-use, Recycle and it should be in that order of priority. I hate to say it but even the gas guzzling Americans are ahead of us in this game. At least their shops give out brown paper bags (hopefully from sustainable sources!) which lead to many a rom com heroine spilling oranges around the parking lot and being assisted by a very toned and very attractive man. In fact I vote for brown paper bags – that would destroy the dating industry! Apologies I have digressed somewhat…
err… main point – I agree with Asquith
Mutley – you can buy some lovely enviro friendly bio degradable bags for your bio degradable poop.
Not quite for the same purpose but one must be adaptable in times of change!
http://www.ethicalsuperstore.com/products/straight/compost-a-bag-bin-liners/
Brown paper bags are fine- as long as you have a car in the parking lot. Totally useless if you take the train. But as part of gesture politics, totally understandable, and I guess that’s what this debate is all about, signalling how virtuous we are.
Don’t forget the Law of Unintended Consequences. In one area where there was a voluntary ban on plastic bags, sales of bin liners went up 400%. Very few people use the supermarket bags once only – in my house, they are usually used to wrap waste hygienically, or put into the plastic recycle bin. These bags are incredible useful, and as someone pointed out above, banning them is eco-gesture politics only. It is done to make some people feel better, while removing from the rest of us a useful resource.