New eco-tax on way as Copenhagen hots up for climate week

The government has promised a new personal tax to help the environment, in the week when Copenhagen gears up for its international conference on climate change. 

The new ‘eco-tax’ would aim to vastly reduce the amount of plastic in circulation, by imposing a charge on the use of plastic carrier bags in shops and supermarkets. 

Despite a fall of a quarter in the use of plastic bags over the past 2 years, 10bn bags are still distributed each year in supermarkets, according to the website AbolishPlasticBags. 

On November 25^th, the London Councils’ ‘Ban the Bag’ campaign withdrew its London Shopping Bag Bill from parliament in return for the new government undertaking. A government action would be more effective than the local London initiative, because it will be nationwide. 

Wales has already taken its own tax initiative on plastic bags with a 15p per bag charge to be introduced in early 2011. 

Ireland was first to ‘bin the bags’ back in 2002, when a 22c charge on supermarket bags cut consumption by 94% in just a few weeks. 

The UK government has pledged to introduce a formal tax if voluntary initiatives by retailers fail to vastly reduce the amount of packaging in circulation.

Reducing plastic use is viewed as a major contribution to environmental renewal, as plastic bags take up to 1,000 years to degrade. 

Retailers such as Tesco are already encouraging the re-use of bags by selling their ‘Bag for Life’ heavy duty plastic bags for 10p, and promising to replace them free of charge when they are worn out. 

In the US, local plastic bag taxes are already working well in San Francisco, with Washington planning to introduce a 5c tax in January.