Taxes on plastic shopping bags in Wales

There are just under three million people living in Wales where they have a degree of self governance with the Welsh Assembly. The Assembly is trying hard to undertake environmental and climate protection measures, although not all of their measures will be successful. However, they seem to be doing more than England, where there is no degree of self governance, and perhaps there is a lesson there.

One of the positive measures that the Welsh assembly are enacting is a tax on single use plastic shopping bags, distributed free by most retailers. The assembly has estimated that 480 million of such bags are used in Wales every year, and if that estimate is right it means that every man woman and child uses on average 193 plastic bags each year, or just under four bags a week.

Plastic bags have an adverse environmental effect; they can take decades or even centuries to break down, they are made of oil based material and litter our countryside and fill up landfill sites.

It is not as though there is no alternative to single use plastic bags. Fifty years ago no one would dream of going to the shops without taking a shopping bag, or if there was a large amount of shopping to buy, one of those shopping carriers on wheels. These days we turn up at supermarkets with little more than our car keys and a credit card, knowing that the supermarket will provide, free of charge, as many plastic bags as we need for our shopping. Perhaps in doing so, they encourage us to buy more than we really need.

Slowly people are changing their habit of not taking a shopping bag with them. Many more people take shopping bags with them when they go to the shops, because they want to help the environment. Often, the habit of not taking a bag has become so ingrained that we forget, but I believe that more and more people are behaving positively when it comes to shopping bags.

The Welsh Assembly will place a tax on single use plastic bags, although we do not yet know how much they will be taxed. I expect that the charge will be around ten pence – a nice round number. 480 million 10ps will raise 48 million pounds in a year, in theory, but I expect that many people will be so annoyed by the tax that they will remember to bring their shopping bags or re use old plastic bags. With any luck, the amount raised will be much lower than £48 million.

The Assembly does not have the power to spend the tax raised. As I understand it, the money will go to the central treasury coffers, where no doubt it will be wasted on bankers’ bonuses, MPs expenses, over paid quangos or spent on wars. It would be nice if the money was hypothecated to specific Welsh environmental projects, such as solar water heating for the poor in the valleys or coastline protection.

The retail industry in Wales is opposed to this tax. They think that people should be persuaded to change their behaviour not “clobbered with taxes”. However, if people behave in a way that is environmentally detrimental it is only reasonable to expect them to pay for it, and a plastic bag tax fits in with the principle that the polluter should pay.

It strikes me that the Welsh are leading the United Kingdom on this issue, and their initiative would be excellent for everyone (except the plastic bag manufacturers) if the whole country adopted it.