A complete ban on plastic bags is the only way to really help the environment

Doubling the price of a single-use plastic bag to 10p from 21 May and extending the initiative from major supermarkets to small corner shops is a threadbare gesture that won’t do much to clean up our beaches or stop the plague of litter that defaces the UK.

If the government was serious about flaunting its environmental credentials it would have banned these bags altogether. Instead, it prevaricates.

Publication of a "green list" might offer us the chance to go abroad this summer without the need to quarantine on return, but it won’t alter the reality – most Brits will spend their holidays closer to home. UK holiday destinations, from beaches to national parks and beauty spots are expecting huge crowds, which means only one thing. Overflowing litter bins and a carpet of filth someone else must clear up. If big music events are allowed to resume in August, the same result will ensue.

Why are the British so grimy? We claim to care about the planet and lead Europe with our green targets, but the same people who sign petitions to save dolphins and whales are the culprits who still cling to plastic. According to a survey from the Waste and Resources Action Programme (Wrap) charity, almost half (49 per cent) of 18-34-year-olds buy carrier bags when they go shopping, compared to just one in 10 baby boomers (the generation over 55).

Wrap is committed to helping business reduce their environmental impact and re-educate the public to improve their habits. But is it making a real impact? Look at its website, it burbles on about the goal of “Citizen Behaviour Change”, claiming to use “a suite of campaigns, tools and interventions [which] are then amplified by a diverse range of stakeholders”. Please translate that into normal common English for the masses so we can get the message!

Wrap claims the sale of plastic shopping bags has dropped by 90 per cent since the compulsory 5p charge was introduced in 2015, but one in four of us still buy them, so it seems the “nudging” tactics have been a bit of a failure. Worse, the messaging doesn’t seem to be getting through to the biggest litterers – the young. Wrap found that 56 per cent of 18-34-year-olds rated plastic waste an important issue, compared to 73 per cent of my generation, the boomers.

As for raising £150m for “good causes” with the sale of 5p bags, that money is a drop in the ocean when it comes to the cost of regenerating green spaces wrecked by fly-tipping and paying council workers and refuse collectors to pick up our crap.

Out walking, the copious amounts of litter I encounter on verges, hanging from trees and poking out of hedgerows, does not – in my experience – come from pensioners walking their dogs or middle-aged folk exercising to avert a heart attack. Those two groups do not graze on packets of Haribos, cans of Coke and lager, or snack on wholefood super grain salads in natty plastic tubs, or generally consume bags of gaudy gold plastic bags of pork scratching-flavoured crisps.

These are the ingredients of teenage expeditions undertaken at night or whenever adults are sparse, presumably to get stoned or drunk with few disapproving oldies about.

It might seem unfair to demonise a whole generation, but it’s the hypocrisy of so many young people which enrages me.

Wrap should have asked for a ban on the sale of any shopping bags which aren’t fully recyclable, full stop. Instead, it witters on about the young having “busy lives”, noting that perhaps carrying their own bag (or rucksack) to transport their purchases “isn’t top of their agenda”.

Hogwash. The same lot tell us (via protest groups like Extinction Rebellion) they are determined to save the planet, to change the way WE behave. But all change must start with small gestures. It has to start at home, every day. You can’t claim to be “green” when it’s convenient, but opt out when you want to eat a snack outside or buy a ready meal (both of which will probably be packaged in plastic).

Supermarkets are responsible for around a million tonnes of the stuff a year, and while many are switching to recyclable packaging, the use of plastic bags remains the single dirty habit we find hard to kick. Coming up with a “bag for life” was a disaster. They can be harder to recycle, and don’t solve anything. In 2018 we bought 1.5 billion – another mountain of waste.

The boss of Iceland has voiced his concerns about the litter he sees every day. Richard Walker (who is also the chair of Surfers against Sewage) has described the verges of the A55 which he drives on his way to the company HQ in North Wales as “embarrassing” and “depressing” and has committed the company to axing the use of plastic for its own brand products by 2023. Some John Lewis stores are following the Co-op and Morrisons in banning the sale of “bags for life”.

Retailers seem to have got the message. Slowly they are using more cardboard, promoting loose goods we can put in paper bags. Morrisons offer veg boxes and “wonky” fruit in nets at reduced prices. All small steps. But the onus still lies with consumers.

A Cornish conservation group called Land and Sea has started an online petition asking the government to increase the current fines for littering. Fixed penalty notices are £80, rising to £2,500 if a case goes to court and ends in a conviction. Cornwall is expecting a huge increase in tourists this summer, and yet only 84 fixed penalty notices for littering were issued in 2019-20. That represented a massive increase on the 17 fines issued for 2018-2019, but it is still way too low, given that visitor numbers will run into hundreds of thousands.

Surfers Against Sewage has launched an ambitious campaign, The Million Mile Clean, asking walkers to commit to collecting litter from a 10-mile stretch of a favourite bit of coast, walk or local area over the next decade. Let’s see if it takes off with more than the actions of a committed minority.

Dealing with litter properly means brutal fines imposed by a government-funded task force of militant wardens, a ban on all plastic bags and a 100 per cent guarantee of imprisonment for a fly-tipping conviction. To fight a war, you need weapons, not wet excuses for “busy” people.