Blight of the bags that leave a foul foliage in the countryside

This was not a peculiar fetish on my part, but a description of the bags, particularly plastic ones, that festoon far too many of our trees and hedgerows, and which are still particularly visible in this exceptionally lethargic spring, with so little greenery to obscure them.

The humble bag, relatively well behaved when trapped indoors under the kitchen sink or hanging on the back of a door, becomes wild and rebellious when released into the outside world. It is scurryingly and distractingly transient on the slightest breeze, but stubbornly permanent once tangled among the branches, where even a roaring gale will not shift it.

And, while most of us have never (at least knowingly) seen a witch, their knickers are abundantly in evidence across the country; they have an underwear visibility that would put even David Beckham and his huge billboard adverts to shame.

In 2011, we used 7.6 billion carrier bags in England or, to put it another way, 254 were issued every second.

While clearly not every one of those bags will end up dangling from a tree branch somewhere near you, far too many do.

And quite apart from this foul foliage, you will also trample them underfoot, watch them rolling tumbleweed-like along the road ahead of you, and see them lurking in the bottom of ponds and streams, or washed up like a multi-coloured foam along estuaries and beaches.

In short, carrier bags in the wrong place are ugly, irritating and intrusive. But they are also a problem that, with a bit of political will, we could easily do something about.

That is why the Campaign to Protect Rural England, working with Keep Britain Tidy, the Marine Conservation Society, Surfers Against Sewage and others, is campaigning for the introduction of a five pence charge on single use bags, paper as well as plastic.

Some shops, such as Marks & Spencer, already charge for their single use bags. And, if you go on holiday to Wales or the Republic of Ireland, you will pay at the till for a bag.

A similar charge will be introduced in Northern Ireland next month, and there was a consultation in Scotland last year on the introduction of a carrier bag charging scheme there, with indications that a charge is likely to result.

So the whole of the UK has either already introduced a small charge for single use bags, or is on the way to doing so – apart from England.

A few years ago the supermarkets, collectively, had a push to try to get people to take fewer bags at the till. This included strong promotion of Bags for Life, and urging people to re-use bags, including by rewarding customers with loyalty points if they did so. This was all very welcome, and many of these initiatives are still in place. For a while, they also drove down the number of bags people used. But, since 2010, the number of bags issued has been rising again. While voluntary initiatives to cut bag use are helpful, they don’t work as well, or as permanently, as the introduction of a small charge. The evidence for the effectiveness of a charge is strong. In Ireland, bag usage has fallen by around 90 per cent since charging was introduced, and the amount of bag litter has come down with it.

In Wales, retailers reported that, after the charge was introduced there, the number of bags they gave out fell by up to 96 per cent, and usage dropped by 22 per cent in 2011 after the scheme had been running for only three months. It will of course take longer to clear the residue of bags out of the environment – witches’ knickers are a remarkably durable undergarment – but staunching the flow makes the battle against bag litter much easier.

So why doesn’t the Government here learn from the example of our nearest neighbours?

Apparently they do recognise that the single use bag is a problem. In September 2011, David Cameron described the increase in the number of bags being given out as “unacceptable” and said he wanted to see significant falls again.

The Prime Minister said he would be asking retailers to explain themselves if they couldn’t do better. As yet, there is little or no evidence that he has been holding anyone’s feet to the fire. And Defra has said that it is monitoring the progress of charging schemes elsewhere, although monitoring without an end-point is, ultimately, pointless. There is plenty of evidence on which to act now.

Perhaps, though, they are worried about adding to household budgets in difficult economic times?

This is a consideration for any sensible government in a time of austerity. But in this case it’s an argument as flimsy as the lightest plastic bag.

A five pence charge on single use bags is voluntary. It’s not a tax, because you can choose not to pay it simply by taking your own bags with you when you shop. And given that we each use, on average, 130 bags a year, even if we chose to continue to buy every one of those, it would cost £6.50 per year. As it is, all of us instead pay the hidden costs of single use bags, including the extraordinarily wasteful litter clear-up bill.

If Ministers are worried that introducing a single use bag charge would be unpopular, they should look at the polling evidence. Since it was introduced, support for the Welsh scheme has grown from 59 to 70 per cent. And polling we commissioned in England last year found that well over half of adults think it is not unreasonable to charge for carrier bags. Only a quarter of respondents disagreed with this view.

The Government appears bewitched; determined to kick witches’ knickers into the long grass. We mustn’t let this happen. The single use bag charge is one of relatively few initiatives that are effective, inexpensive and popular. It’s high time to break the bag habit.

Ben Stafford, from Leeds, is head of campaigns at the Campaign to Protect Rural England.