5p charge for plastic bags from October 2015 to cut usage

[rich888]

I learned a few days ago that ministers are intending to introduce a 5p tax for each plastic bag used from October 2015 onwards in an effort to cut down usage of bags by shoppers.

So how do they expect us to carry our shopping to the car without such bags, or is this just one more sneaky way to add a 12% tax on the average shopping bag.

Yes I appreciate that we can buy a bag for life, and my wife bought one, but it lasted for less than 3 months, so not exactly for life before we had to throw it away. And yet we use the disposable bags which decompose in the waste paper bins for all manner of rubbish so they're hardly wasted.

And if indeed this fee is supposedly to reduce waste of natural resources, why do government officials continue to jet around the world and stay in hotels in 1st class luxury, all paid by the UK taxpayer, to attend pointless political meetings, when they could quite easily have attended these overseas meetings using a video link?

If it is to reduce the national debt then why do they continue to give millions away to other countries when we really can't afford to do so because we're nearly broke, and why do the current government persist in bombing other countries at huge expense to us UK taxpayers when they acknowledge that we are still in huge debt that is nearly unsustainable. It wouldn't take much to push us over the edge if Russian and the Chinese moved their money out of the UK.

If recycling was of a major concern why don't we do what most other countries in the EU do and collect the rubbish on a daily basis before delivering and sorting it in a centralised area dedicated to waste management, instead of insisting on all manner of silly bins, bags and two week collections - makes me wonder who are the shareholders making a fortune in the companies manufacturing the waste bins?

I'm all for saving the world by making realistic cutbacks, but not when the people at the top who are dictating the terms and conditions, are quite blatantly ignoring their own propaganda, and squandering our resources without a care in the world.

Is this a rant, well no, I'm just pointing out the obvious, and I bet that not many know that the EU jobsworths move their headquarters twice a year at massive expense to all EU taxpayers, and why haven't the accounts been signed off by their accountants?

Edited by rich888 on Thursday 6th August 00:25

[rich888]

turbobloke said:

Randy Winkman said:

George111 said:

The charge for plastic bags is a knee jerk reaction to appease the environmentalists, not a considered, sensible approach to a problem, if there ever was a problem.

Seeing that something seems to work perfectly well in plenty of other countries isn't really "knee jerk".

The experience of other countries may involve a drop in use (hardly surprising) but that's not the whole picture and not necessarily a success. It doesn't need a tax to reduce usage, plastic bag use by weight in the UK is down 40% since 2006 with no taxation involved. Not that it matters, of itself, but that's the story so far.

The psychology being attached to achieving further reductions is questionable. When Sainsbury’s sold a limited edition Anya Hindmarch reusable shopping bag for £5 in back in 2007 they had customers lined up at dawn and the items in question subsequently sold for ~£200 on eBay. Emissions from the Volvos and German saloons zipping off to each shop's car park don't matter.

Then there's the basis for the tax - there isn't one. If councils and other relevant bodies did what we already get taxed for them to do, there would be much less of a litter problem, if any.

Release of carbon dioxide from slow decomposition of plastic isn't doing anything harmful, the zillion tonnes emitted over the last 18+ years from more prolific sources has done nothing except boost growth of trees and crops; for those who may have caught asnd swallowed the most oft-repeated excuse for no global warming over the last 18+ years - that the oceans ate the IPCC's global warming, as per BBC propaganda - there's plenty over in the climate threads demonstrating the fallacy of this desperate claim.

It remains pointless tokenism which, like other pointless tokenism of the same type, will remain popular for a while particularly in uninformed but right-on cliques where brains are in neutral and the will to believe (truly) is high.

Spot on, charging for plastic bags is merely an excuse to marginally increase tax revenue by whatever means necessary. The UK emissions compared to the likes of most other countries must be insignificant. If UK politicians were genuinely interested in cutting emissions they wouldn't be driving around in huge swathes of Range Rovers and Jaguars, and certainly wouldn't be flying around the world to far flung places for ever more political conferences to save the world, instead they would knuckle down, save money, and deal with the situation as we expect them to do.

[rich888]

beko1987 said:

I popped into Waitrose yesterday and took a tesco and asda carrier bag with me. I felt like I wasnt welcome there...

Personally I've found that the Ikea bag works best in the trolley and holds a huge amount of shopping, though do have a couple of Aldi bags just to wind the staff up in Tesco, Asda and Sainsburys...

Makes me wonder just how long it will be before security have a word in your ear for using a rival bag, though I do think it was your own fault for popping into Waitrose

"Oy you, you can't come in ere with that old bag", "I'll have you know she's no bag, she's my wife"

[rich888]

What surprises me is why none of the shops have cottoned on to what must be a major marketing coup for themselves, and that is to give away the heavier bags emblazoned with their brand name to their customers. Must be one of the cheapest ways for them to advertise their brand and far cheaper than TV or radio advertising, plus it gets their brand name into the rival stores for all their customers to see - I believe it is only the lightweight bags that are subject to the petty 5p tax which incidentally has already been costed into the price of the goods by the shops so should be free.

As an advertising ploy you only have to wander around the average shopping centre to see ladies walking around with River Island shopping bags filled with clothes, which must be excellent product placement, is free advertising for the store for goodness sake - my wife does it often enough and it costs me a fortune!

I still have great delight in reusing the Aldi bags in Asda and Tesco because it must not half annoy the management, though consider the best bag of them all for placing in the trolley to be the heavy duty bag from Ikea which fits like a glove and you can get an awful lot of shopping in it so is ideal for the weekly shop - if Ikea had any sense they would put a great big 'IKEA' logo across the sides of it.

[rich888]

Ridley said:

rich888 said:

if Ikea had any sense they would put a great big 'IKEA' logo across the sides of it.

If there was a huge logo on the side people would be less likely to carry it around. Plus there can't be many people who see that bag and don't instantly recognise it.

Fair comment, perhaps they should reverse it 'AEKI' to make people think, haha

[rich888]

oyster said:

rich888 said:

What surprises me is why none of the shops have cottoned on to what must be a major marketing coup for themselves, and that is to give away the heavier bags emblazoned with their brand name to their customers. Must be one of the cheapest ways for them to advertise their brand and far cheaper than TV or radio advertising, plus it gets their brand name into the rival stores for all their customers to see - I believe it is only the lightweight bags that are subject to the petty 5p tax which incidentally has already been costed into the price of the goods by the shops so should be free.

As an advertising ploy you only have to wander around the average shopping centre to see ladies walking around with River Island shopping bags filled with clothes, which must be excellent product placement, is free advertising for the store for goodness sake - my wife does it often enough and it costs me a fortune!

I still have great delight in reusing the Aldi bags in Asda and Tesco because it must not half annoy the management, though consider the best bag of them all for placing in the trolley to be the heavy duty bag from Ikea which fits like a glove and you can get an awful lot of shopping in it so is ideal for the weekly shop - if Ikea had any sense they would put a great big 'IKEA' logo across the sides of it.

There's a whole lot more to marketing and advertising than a brand name being seen across a shopping bag.

In any case, do you really think any shoppers in Tesco are not already logo aware of Sainsbury's or Asda or Lidl etc? Branding is much more than logo.

Haha, there may well be a whole lot more to marketing and advertising than sticking a brand name on a shopping bag, but you had better tell that to my wife when she's out shopping because all it takes is for her to glance across and see a fashion bag and instantly that seed has been sown, perhaps a subconscious reminder of where to shop next perhaps, but for what it costs to do I would say it's an extremely cheap way of getting more customers into the shop.

I'm sure that most shoppers in Tesco or Sainsbury's are aware of most other brands, but seeing a rival logo or name must remind them that they perhaps they need to call in and buy something else, if they hadn't seen the reminder they would have carried on blissfully unaware. Something along the lines of subconscious product placement in a film.

Aside from which, I find it extremely irritating to have to keep pressing the silly '0' bag quantity button on the self-checkouts having been asked the question right at the start, it just wastes time. And god forbid if you put your own bag down in the bagging area, whereupon the damn thing locks up and utters the words 'unexpected item placed in bagging area', and you have to wait for a staff member to walk over and clear the error message!

And I'm being somewhat sarcastic now, but if Cameron and the rest of the political circus clowns from all parties were really interested in reducing CO2 emissions and climate change, then perhaps they ought to set an example and stop flying around the world on continual climate change jollies to very exotic and expensive locations with their ever increasing entourage, burning ever more fossil fuels in the process, and actually knuckled down and did something useful, instead of ever more political posturing and bullst, all paid for of course by us taxpaying peasants.