LIB DEM SUCCESS - HUGE REDUCTION IN USE OF PLASTIC BAGS
December 9, 2016 11:35 PM
By Jill Baston, Environment Spokesperson
By Jill Baston, Environment Spokesperson
Single use bags blight our towns and countryside, they trap and suffocate wildlife, and plastic bags take hundreds of years to degrade.
The Liberal Democrats, when in government, successfully introduced, in the teeth of Tory opposition, a 5p charge on the thin plastic bags given out when shopping.
The result?
The number of single-use plastic bags used by shoppers in England has fallen by more than 85%.
More than 7bn bags were handed out by seven main supermarkets in the year before the charge but this dropped to just over 500m in the first six months after the charge had been introduced.
And charities have benefited from the £29m raised and donated by supermarkets.