What is going on here?
Charges for plastic bags in UK supermarkets seem to be doing the trick to reduce plastic pollution. Beach cleans by the Marine Conservation Society (MCS) have shown an 80% drop in the number of plastic bags that wash up on UK beaches.
What does this mean?
The MCS has run an annual beach cleaning programme for the last 30 years. In this year’s survey, volunteers found one plastic bag on average per 100 metres of beach. In 2014, they found five times as many.
The marine charity puts this dramatic improvement down to plastic bag charges. UK supermarkets started charging for plastic bags in 2015. In the year before, 7.6 billion plastic bags were handed out to customers – around 140 per person. Now, they cost at least 10p each, in a bid to reduce our dependence on single-use plastic and tackle plastic pollution.
Lizzie Price, Beachwatch Manager at the MCS, said, “There is no doubt that these policies have been extremely successful in reducing this frequently littered item.”
But that’s only half of the story. Supermarkets sold 1.58 billion ‘bags for life’ in 2019, a 4.5% increase from 2018 according to the Environmental Investigation Agency. One study says you’d need to use one of these thicker bags 10-20 times to make it worthwhile. But many of us end up using them just once or twice before ending up at the checkout empty handed, needing to buy a new one.
Why should we care?
Reducing single-use plastic can help protect ocean creatures as well as the UK’s beautiful beaches. Plastic pollution is harmful to marine life, as well as posing possible risks to human health. Marine life can mistakenly eat discarded plastic, or get injured by or tangled up in it.
Plastic is also a problem when it breaks down, forming tiny particles called microplastics. They’ve been found throughout the marine food chain and in humans. While the impact of microplastics isn’t yet well understood, studies have shown they could cause health problems.
The MCS has hailed the success of the plastic bag charge at reducing the number of single-use plastic bags ending up as litter, and urged more action on other single-use plastics. Its volunteers found litter on 97% of UK beaches surveyed last year.
Lizzie Price said, “We need broader policies that charge or ban more single-use items where possible such as the proposed deposit return schemes for plastic bottles, cans, and glass. We must move quicker towards a society that repairs, reuses and recycles.”
Be curious!
- Join the Great British Beach Clean in September, one of the largest citizen science programmes in the UK.
- Check out how your local shop performs in Greenpeace’s supermarket plastic league table.
- Next time you pop to the shops, remember to take a reusable bag with you.
- From the Curious archives: read about the Global Plastics Treaty and how to get involved.
Photo by Dominik Pearce on Unsplash.
