Environmental campaigners have called on the government to learn from its own successes after official figures showed the use of single-use supermarket plastic bags had fallen 98% since retailers in England began charging for them in 2015.
Annual distribution of plastic carrier bags by seven leading grocery chains plummeted from 7.6bn in 2014 to 133m last year, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said on Monday.
Even in that scenario, it’s not like the first one goes away. Now you have two reusable bags.
Now I have 20+ until I can’t store them any more so I have to throw them out*
There’s no real way to get rid of surplus bags, that’s the problem. So they just pile up until they go to landfill. If shops let you return bags somehow that would be fantastic.