plastic bag 5p charge the printed bag shop
June 2, 2014

5p plastic bag charge now backed by Scottish parliament

Following in the footsteps of Wales and Northern Ireland, new regulations regarding the introduction of a 5p charge on single-use plastic carrier bags have now also been approved by the Scottish parliament.

Plans to charge customers a minimum of 5p per carrier bag, which were supported by 100 votes to 12 by MSPs, will be compulsory for almost all single-use carrier bags in Scotland from October this year.

The decision comes after Scottish Environment Secretary Richard Lochhead said that it was ‘time to take action’ on the issue of plastic bags.

He commented that Scotland use around 750 million carrier bags every year from supermarkets alone, and that placing a charge on them is part of a wider strategy to tackle the country’s litter issues.

Mr Lochhead also said that this new regulation would start to challenge the idea of a ‘throw-away society’, and encourage consumer to reuse plastic bags so as to ‘help make the most out of increasingly limited resources and to cut carbon emissions at the same time.’

Money raised from the charge is planned to be donated to good causes.

Wales introduced this charge back in 2011, and Northern Ireland followed suit last year. Scotland will now join them in an effort to tackle this nationwide problem and try to reduce the impact of plastic bags on the UK’s environment.

We understand the severe damage that environmentally unfriendly plastic bags can cause; this is why our printed plastic bags do not use virgin polythene, which can take thousands of years to degrade, and instead we offer high or low density polythene which is either recycled or fully biodegradable and therefore reduces harmful effects to our environment.

View our range of plastic bags here.

(Quotes from BBC News)

Other blogs you might like: