I Am Not A Free Plastic Bag

Sainsbury's set to stop offering free throwaway bags from October

Sainsbury's is set to follow in M&S’s footsteps and stop offering free throwaway shopping bags from October. London Councils, the organization who proposed in Parliament which included an outright ban on plastic bags, welcomed the news but said that more needs to be done.

The group’s chairman Cllr Merrick Cockell said, "I am delighted that Sainsbury's are following the growing trend of stores taking a stand for the environment by doing this. It helps add more weight to our argument that using single-use shopping bags is socially unacceptable.

"Free throwaway shopping bags are an environmental hazard. Londoners use an estimated 1.6 billion of them each year, and these either end up littering our streets, becoming a danger to wildlife or in landfill sites where they can take 400 years to break down.

"We all have a duty to reduce the number of single-use bags we use, and tough action needs to be taken to achieve this. However, the government's plans simply to add a tax or charge for these bags do not go far enough. What kind of a deterrent is a few extra pennies on the weekly shopping bill?

"London Councils has led the way in tackling this menace by depositing a private Bill in Parliament that seeks to bring in a ban on single-use throwaway shopping bags in the capital. We believe this kind of stand is the only way to tackle the blight of the throwaway shopping bag."

September 18, 2008