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I wonder why the UK supermarkets - some of whom, like Asda, are part of larger American organisation - don't adopt the practice of using brown paper sacks for groceries, etc.

The brown paper could be made out of recycled paper and would obviously be much more biodegradable - although perhaps not quite as portable as the usual supermarket plastic bags with handles.

Why not do like the Americans who have their shopping put in large paper bags. At least paper will disintegrate and is not as polluting to create...!!!!????

I hope the Daily mail (and other newspapers) follow their care for the environment and cut out the Plastic Bags they give out every Saturday Sunday with their magazines?

Perhaps they would also look at the CD's they give out free, which mostly end up straight in landfill.

Those in glass houses shouldnt throw stones. They have and seem to have got away with it

R Chamberlain
Bolton

If getting your way in politics is that easy, then perhaps the Daily Mail should call for a general election or a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.
I'm looking forward to the Mail's Thursday and Friday headlines!

What a load of nonsense!! The supermarkets can continue to use as much useless and wastefull packaging as they like, but I can't have a plastic bag to carry it home in. Plus, I'll now have to start buying bin liners for the kitchen bin rather than recycling my plastic bags like I currently do.

The plastic bags debate is a convenient sideshow to enable the government to avoid addressing the real environmental problem - the amount of packaging that goes into the plastic bags. Why are products wrapped in so much packaging? Because successive governments and Brussels have demanded tamper-proof and 'health-protecting' measures that mean that most food products have at least two layers of packaging, while non-foods are shrink and blister wrapped against large pieces of card so that all the nutritional, consumer rights, contacts for complaints, origin of manufacture, etc, information can be printed on the back. And what about the plastic packaging around pre-packed fruit and vegetables and the plastic bags when you pick you own? Why don't the supermarkets provide paper bags? We need to concentrate on the real, far more environmentally-damaging packaging, not the bags to carry it all home in.

Plastic bags are necessary for carrying shopping home especially in a country with so much rainfall where it would not be practical to use paper carrier bags.

What is needed are recycling bins for the plastic bags. I use my supermarket's plastic bags as bin-liners for my rubbish so they are not wasted. Otherwise we would just have to buy plastic bin-liners so the end result is the same.

What is needed is to either re-use them as above or re-cycle them, but we can't really do without them....

WHAT IS THE POINT OF A BUDGET,ITS THE SAME OLD SIREN SONG,YET MORE HIKES IN TAXES,WE MUST BE ONE,IF NOT THE HIGHEST DEVELOPED COUNTRIES IN THE WORLD IN BEING TAXED,WE MIGHT AS WELL BE UNEMPLOYED,AT LEAST THAT WAY WE WOULD'NT BE PAYING COUNCIL TAX.FOR THE FORSEEABLE FUTURE,THIS COUNTRY IS NOW BECOME A THIRD OR EVEN FIFTH RATE COUNTRY,WITH NO MANUFACTURING WHICH ANY SUCCESSFULL COUNTRY REQUIRES,YOU CANT ACTUALLY BELIEVE THAT YOU CAN LIVE ON SERVICES ALONE,FOR WHAT IS THERE TO SERVICE,THIS COUNTRY HAS BEEN CONED BY OUR POLITICAL MASTERS IN BELIEVING THAT WE HAVE HAD AN ECONOMIC BOOM,WHAT RUBISH,ANYBODY WITH ANY SENSE CAN SEE THAT THE ONLY BOOM HAS BEEN IN PEOPLE GETTING INTO DEEP DEBT,WITH CREDIT CARDS,AND EQUITY WITHDRALS TO FINANCE THERE PERSONAL CONSUMPTION,NOW THATS COME TO AN END,GUESS WHERE NEXT?.

When the Chancellor says "supermarkets", he of course refers to a wide range of providers of single-use plastic bags: small shops and councils too, particularly those that provide pooper-scooper bags to dog owners. Will the latter only get exemption if they reuse the bags?

I do feel a bit sorry for the supermarkets here. Competition law prevents them agreeing with each other to increase the price of their bags - that would be a cartel, and they've only just been stung on that count for trying to improve the lot of dairy farmers.

None of them are brave enough to be the one to take the first step, due to the inevitable negative public perception. Fact is that your average British consumer won't want to shop somewhere that charges for bags, even mere pennies, if you can shop somewhere else and not have to pay.

After all, there's already nothing stopping people using reusable bags if the environment was a big issue for them, but millions clearly don't.

Brown paper bags such as the ones given away in America require 5 - 7 x the energy of a plastic bag to produce, 32 x more emissions in terms of transport (due to their bulkier size/weight) and cost 7 x more. Plastic bags contribute less than 1% of annual UK landfill. Plus transfering the use of plastic bags to paper bags doesn't mean that the customer will reduce the amount of bags they use, which should be what the government are asking us to do.

This is just a tokenistic way for the Government to pretend to be tackling environmental issues without actually doing anything to address the real issues they have the ability to change.

It's time to start stocking up on the 'single-use' plastic bags if they won't be available much longer.
Stop recycling them, as most of us already do, and start storing them.
When the time comes, you will have plenty to use as bin liners, dog-poo bags etc.
You could even take them to the supermarket so that you don't have to pay for new ones. Now, there's an idea.

BTW - how can the brown paper bag option be so much better when they genuinely have only a single use and involve more trees being chopped?

It's not plastic bags that are the problem, but all the unessesary packaging that comes with the supermarket items we purchase.
The punter gets slammed yet again whilst the supermarkets get the green light to make more money, this time on plastic bags, which in my opinion should be bio degradable material.

Well what do plastic bags have to do with a budget anyway, unless they are being taxed (which they are not) then they have nothing to do with a budget. Let's focus on the economy people, but the government is just trying to hide the economic issues behind a whole load of irrelevant fluff!

Charging people for plastic bags is a time waste. People will pay anyway and the money will just go towards Gordon Brown's incompetent government.

For 20 years German manufacturers have had to pay for every piece of packaging to be recycled (not disposed off) with a fee levied at the time of manufacture. Since the manufacturer pays, this has kept the amount of packaging in check somewhat but at least it all gets recycled.
For the householder this means a free unlimited collection of packaging. In the UK the big idea is to charge the householder for packaging that they have absolutely no control over.

Surely the answer to the whole plastic bag and packaging debate is to switch to biodegradeable plastic alternatives, these are available now from UK companies. This would enable supermarkets to continue to give away bags which unlike plastic or biodegradeable plastic bags can be composted, food packaging which in my home takes up far more landfill than plastic bags can also be made from bio materials which can be composted. The products are already available that would enable the supermarkets to wrap all their foods in properly biodegradeable packaging allow the consumer to carry these home in biodegradeable bags and then compost the lot, even if these ended up in landfill they decompose in less than 4 months and not the years required for biodegradeable plastic. As I say these products are available now why is no one pursuing them? is there not enough profit in them for the supermarkets or not enough tax for the government?

As an American I can tell you that brown paper bags are falling out of use at the supermarkets - in fact the supermarkets will bag your groceries in plastic unless you specifically request paper bags. Some markets have instituted a charge of a few cents per paper bag.

Of course the proper thing to do is to carry reusable shopping bags with you, but try telling that to all the people loading down their Escalades with several cubic meters' worth of groceries per week.

Okay , supermarket carrier bags ; but what about black rubbish bags ? Same thing but bigger .

For many years now I use bags that I have bought from supermarkets and other places, they are stronger and much better than the flimsy bags that are given free, this is my decision but I cant help the packaging issue other than to buy my butcher meat from a butchers not supermarket, a little more bother but worth it, one thing I have not managed to stop yet is the black rubbish bag but if there was an alternative I would use it, I am disabled and need help shopping what I am totally against is charging for bags at supermarkets as I really dont know what difference it will make except give Gordon Brown another stelth tax the supermarkets will but food up to cover the extra administration costs so we the public will suffer once again. Safeways used to use brown bags for shopping and I put these in waste bins I liked them but again the cost etc already spoken about means these are not viable, so as I said get your message bags and use them our grannies did it probably our mothers Ah the good old days!!

I don't understand why supermarkets can't make biodegradable plastic bags, my local one does and we use it on our compost heap?

Also if I had to pay for supermarket bags, I would then have to go buy more plastic bags to use for all my bins at home - surely its counter-productive for the environment we are trying to protect?

I am not anti this and am environmentally conscious but really...this is not budget worthy!!

If they want to raise green tax revenues, why didn't they just announce a tax on packaging, where the supermarkets get taxed on the items in polythene bags. So if you buy loose veggies, get them in paper bags instead - which can be made of recycled freesheets :).
And if you want the convenience of poly bags, then you pay for them. I remember the local markets all had paper bags when I was a kid (20 years ago). Food kept much better.

It's an avoidable tax, environmentally friendly, and guaranteed that the supermarkets will jump on as a way to cut packing costs. (and gouge on the lazy so-and-sos who want pre-packed everything)

Paul,
You are giving the money to charity, well done, but can you honestly see the supermarkets being so noble? I very much dobut it. It is a joke that we must contribute to supermarket profits and the gov will not even be hard on them for all their other forms of packaging.

Also great point about the Daily Mail and its supplement packaging, a bunch of hypocrits! really makes you wonder about the quality of our journalists and the editors who allow these stories to run!!

Supermarkets in France have charged for bags for as long as I can remember. What's the problem. This bags issue is pure smoke & mirrors.

The people who strew the plastic bags and the rest of their food packaging everywhere are the worst. Polystyrene used for burger and kebab wrapping never ever degrades, and is decorating the canal paths near where I live. It is time all takeaway vans and burger restaurants used only biodegradable packaging.
This country is unbelievably filthy, the bushes round the carpark of every supermarket are full of tins, bottles and sandwich packaging because people eat on the run and then just throw it away. More bins are needed and some way to shame the litter louts out of their dirty lazy ways!

Is it me?

The plastic bags I get from supermarkets disintegrate after a few months. It seems not to matter where they are kept.

Am I the only person getting bio-degradable plastic bags?

I want to know why I should be singled out as everyone else get Buzz Lightyear bags that last into infinity and beyond.

I want those bags

Well done Wendy Morris and all those who have some intellect instead of just emotion about plastic bags. Yes, it's the litter louts fault. Also nice to hear the true figures and facts from Andrew. We need more comments with the truth about plastics instead of those from people who are ill-informed and just biased against plastic. THE GREATEST INVENTION OF THE 20TH CENTURY.

If they really want to curb binge drinking, maybe they should do something about the fact that we work longer than anyone else in Europe, pay more in taxes and get less in services.

After a week of that, I need a drink. I'd probably be a lot less stressed if I was his wages doing a job where you can completely screw everything up and just move into the office next door and start a new job.

Will Gordon Brown be opening a hotline for people to report the illicit use of plastic bags,rivalling John Majors traffic cone hotline? Thank goodness Gordon has found a big issue to base his legacy on!

Dacre made the Blairs' lives a misery so it must be one small mercy for Gordon Brown that he is 'onside'.

As Brown keeps on putting the equivalent of a plastic bag over his political head, then it is not surprising he wants them banned.

PS. Somebody tell Gordon Brown that the Britain he is looking for has been dying for the last 30 years or so and is way beyond saving now.

What really annoys me is that the government think we are so stupid that we will be impressed by this plastic bag business. Of all the things they could be doing for the environment, like taxing light bulbs that aren't low energy, enforcing manufactureres to desist from putting standby buttons on everything to name but two, they can only jump on the backs of many supermarkets who are trying to do something on their own. WOW, well done the working mans party.

The Supermarkets are the winners. They won't have to pay for the bags supplied any more. We will either buy the bags for more than it costs to make them, or bring our own strong re-usable ones(which we have probably bought originally from the supermarket). Then, on top of that, we will now have to buy bin bags from the supermarket instead of re-cycling the carrier bags as we used to. Not one landfill plastic bag will have been saved - but the supermarket doesn't lose any money on the supply of bags and earns more from the sale of bin bags. Pretending to be green, I say.

Dacre will not get his knighthood until Gorgon has finished using him.

We are all lazy about using our own bags and the plastic ones are causing havoc for the environment, if small towns can go completely plastic bag free then so can we all. Why don't we go back to brown paper bags or what Lidl used to do, have all their boxes lying at the door for packing your shopping and make double use of them.
The supermarkets must also do their bit and stop using so much packaging to make things look better.
I noticed a campaign which encouraged us to take back to supermarkets all the packaging we get from all our foods.
Why is it that the chancellor did not tax supermarkets for using all this packaging.