Good news:
We heard last week that England will soon adopt a mandatory 5 pence charge for plastic shopping bags, and applauded the news. I believe most of Europe had already rid itself of free plastic bags (in food stores, at least) some years ago.
Although plasticsindustry.org claims the impact of plastic bags on landfill mass is negligible, less damaging than paper, etc. I know that even in our local area, bags frequently get thrown out by the roadside. As far as the claim that plastic shopping bags are "100% recyclable," Wikipedia indicates that while HDPE nags (recycling code 2) are useful for post-consumer material, LDPE ones are much less useful. The latter is used mainly for making plastic bags, so I don't think we can accept that shopping bags are all 100% recyclable, let alone that they are generally getting recycled in practice.
It seems reasonable to expect that paying for these bags will encourage more people to find other ways of carrying groceries, for example the old-fashioned backpack or wheeled trolleys, both of which also carry the weight with less physical stress.
What was strange was seeing the Daily Mail claim that this policy change resulted from a Mail campaign to reduce plastic bag use. I suppose that end of the political scene does feel invested in protecting the countryside, and we can agree with that. Shopping bags seem to be another thing that end up largely taken for granted, but were never really needed (a future post on carpeting will be forthcoming, someday).
