Charges For Plastic Carrier Bags

EDM number 891 in 2012-13, proposed by Alan Meale on 08/01/2013.
Categorised under the topics of Service industries and Waste management.

That this House regrets that despite pressure from both Parliament and governments in recent times, single-use plastic carrier bags continue to be increasingly issued by shops and supermarkets to their customers throughout the UK, with more than 8 billion handed out in 2011; believes such products are wasteful andhazardous to wildlife, end up as litter or in landfill sites in which they take hundreds of years to degrade; further believes that retailers have to do better on this matter in the future; notes that, following recent action taken in Wales and Ireland to introduce charges for such commodities, usage has dropped by around 90 per cent; further notes that the British Retail Consortium recently accepted that such a strategy works, but that they also warned it would only continue to do so if the Government were to indicate its support for such measures as a priority; therefore calls on the Government to support the campaign to Break the Bag Habit run by the campaign to Protect Rural England, Keep Britain Tidy, the Marine Conservation Society and Surfers Against Sewage to reduce litter and waste by requiring retailers to introduce as a priority a charge on all new single-use bags.

This motion has been signed by a total of 23 MPs.