Holland & Barrett boss to ban plastic bags

Needless to say the Carrier Bag Consortium (CBC) has reacted angrily to this news with a host of counter claims about carrier bags being better for the environment and jute bags being a danger - the chain will sell jute bags instead of giving away plastic ones.

The CBC is made up of major plastic bag suppliers in the UK. They are fighting against an outright ban, although shifting to supplying other bags or even biodegradable plastic bags would seem to make sense in the long run. Even if a ban does not happen various pledges are in place to cut plastic bag use which must impact on the CBC members.

As I have said before the actual resources used to produce a plastic bag are small certainly in carbon footprint terms, but with the numbers used worldwide that small footprint soon mounts up. However, I do not think that is the point; plastic bags represent an image of ourselves as someone who uses and then throws away and it is this image that is becoming unpalatable to many - it is just wasteful and who wants to be seen as wasteful.

Are you the type of person who uses a plastic bag throws it away knowing it will sit buried in a landfill until, well forever, or let it blow around the street slowly breaking into smaller and smaller pieces causing harm to animals and an eyesore to humans. Increasingly it will be the action of retailers and shoppers that will dictate what will happen.

I for one am not going to give up my sturdy shopping bags and go back to filling my bin with plastic bags.