Disclaimer: This article reflects the opinions and interpretations of iAM Learning, based on publicly available information, discussions with major UK supermarkets, and our own observations. We have not independently verified all claims and figures. No assertion is made that any particular supermarket has acted unlawfully or dishonestly. Any inferences about bag pricing or charitable donations are based on general market information and are intended to encourage transparency and discussion. We welcome corrections or additional information from any retailer mentioned or implied.
“5p for a bag?!”
In 2011, Wales became the first country in the UK to introduce a minimum charge for single-use carrier bags. England followed soon after. On the face of it, this was actually a great idea. Until this point, people, generally, had been very wasteful with carrier bags.
Consider, for a moment, the journey one of these single-use bags takes from production to where many of them ultimately end up: in a landfill, degrading very slowly (between 20 and 1000 years!), or in the sea, adding yet more litter to an ecosystem on the verge of collapse.
This charge, a mild inconvenience to most, has had a significant effect, too. The number of single-use bags used and discarded has dramatically decreased plastic pollution and waste from this sector. Government sources suggest that plastic bag use has fallen by more than 98% percent in the decade following the introduction of the charge. Billions fewer bags, tonnes of plastic no longer piling up in landfills and choking turtles.
It's been a roaring success, and one that some supermarkets are very happy to talk about in their annual sustainability reports. It makes them look good. Let’s be fair to them; some supermarkets are working very hard to reduce single-use plastics across their range. Further, some are actively trying to find alternatives to plastic bags. Co-Op, for example, a company that prides itself on community and sustainability, has created multi-use compostable carrier bags that biodegrade. They’re strong, too, which solves a problem some other retailers have had.
So, what’s the problem?
This 5p minimum charge soon became 10p. That’s inflation for you. It’s a nominal amount of money for most, something easily swallowed in with your rising food shop bill. And, as we were promised, the money collected would be going to sustainability charities, every time we had to buy a bag, we could feel better about ourselves. We aren’t contributing to plastic waste: we’re helping the planet.
Except, are we?
Putting aside the fact that plenty of us have a cupboard, drawer or tote bag overflowing with bags because we regularly forget to take them to the supermarket, let alone recycle them in that cage trolley you’ll find near the entrance of the big supermarkets, we can’t be sure that plastic bag money was going to charity at all.
Things have changed with these bags, too. ‘Bags for Life’, a thicker, stronger plastic bag, is often the only type of bag available from supermarkets. Since these are not sold as single-use, the 10p charge doesn’t apply to them, based on our research. That means supermarkets can charge whatever they want for them. Between 30p and £1 seems to be the current amount, depending on where you shop.
Does that mean any money made from the purchase of these bags doesn’t have to go to charity, either? If we had to guess, we’d say: the supermarkets are keeping it all to themselves. But that is just a guess. We had to guess, because we asked the supermarkets, and most of them were very tight-lipped about it. But more on that later.
The Illusion of Choice
So, the choice of bag has been removed. You might have a lovely, expensive, woven one or, indeed, a Bag for Life. No single-use bags to be seen anymore. That puts the pressure to ‘do the right thing’ and reuse bags back on the consumer. Again, this could be viewed as a good thing. From the supermarket’s point of view, you aren’t forced to buy a bag: you should be reusing one you’ve previously bought. And when it’s reached the end of its useful life, you bring it back to the supermarket and swap it for a fresh one, for free. ‘For LIFE’.
But, you know, we’re humans. We forget. We go for a walk and get a call from our partner to “pick up some bits on your way home”, and don’t have a bag with us, because we weren’t planning on going shopping.
And, if the plastic handle is on the verge of breaking, saving a bag for recycling at the store isn’t the first thing on our minds. Yes, it should be. Often, it’ll just end up in the bin and hang the cost!
What we’re getting at here is that the problem with plastic remains. Ultimately, it seems that not many people recycle their bags, so they end up in the same place. Fewer of them, admittedly. But, in our opinion, the supermarkets have passed on their plastic obligation to the consumer, and are raking in 30p-£1 extra each time.
What Did the Supermarkets Say?
We’ll be transparent, here. We aren’t investigative journalists, and the approach we took to get information from supermarkets wasn’t the best one. We simply asked them a few questions:
It seemed, to us, reasonable to assume that supermarkets, so forthcoming with their sustainability in reports and advertisements, would be happy to shout about this. Donating to charity is a good thing, after all. But since we couldn’t find any figures about this specific fundraising after scouring their reports, we had to ask. It’s in the public interest, after all.
What Did We Discover?
Frankly, not very much.
“We aren’t obligated to respond to these questions”.
One thing we did discover is that supermarkets are exempt from Freedom of Information (FOI) requests, as they are not public authorities. We also found, without naming names, that some supermarkets are quite defensive about this topic. Why might that be?
While we did have some good conversations with some of the supermarkets, none of them wanted to provide much in the way of figures, except to link us to the already available sustainability pages on their website, which had no answers, and telling us ‘how seriously they take sustainability’ and ‘how conscious they are about waste generated’.
You know, they also told us about their net-zero ambitions, their plans for the next 15 years and their development of exciting new sustainable bags (promising!). But only one of the supermarkets told us something remotely relevant.
“We no longer sell single-use plastic bags, and instead, our paper bags for life are priced at 40p and can hold up to 16kg.
Our plastic Bags for Life are 60p and made from soft recycled plastics. We also replace all bags which are damaged free of charge.
[This supermarket] reinvests the money from our carrier bags to drive sustainability across the business, such as investment in more recyclable packaging solutions, which are typically on cost”
So, there we have it. Supermarkets want you to believe that they are doing extraordinary things to help the planet (and maybe they are, especially in some cases), but they do not want you to have this information. I wonder why that could be.
When Washing Becomes a Dirty Word
There’s a word that very neatly describes this scenario, which we’ve refrained from using until now. Greenwashing.
It’s where companies make misleading claims about their products or services. “We’re helping the planet with this bag choice” is really “We’re taking advantage of this law to claw in some extra cash. Whether 10p or a quid, there must be many thousands of bags purchased every day in supermarkets across the UK, and while you think it’s going to charity, in our opinion, it’s not. It’s straight into the tills of these retail giants, with a vague promise of ‘reinvestment in sustainability’, in some cases, but with nothing to back it up.
What Should Be Done?
Let’s be fair here. With the government setting net-zero targets for retailers, problems like plastic waste from carrier bags aren’t going to go to waste. It’s right that retailers are encouraging us to make the switch to more sustainable products. We just think they should be doing more.
Plastic alternatives should be heavily invested in. Biodegradable technology is out there and should be more widely used, giving customers an alternative. And supermarkets, as well as other retailers, should be clear about where the money is going. We’re happy to continue paying this fee, but it should be going to sustainable causes, and they should tell us which ones and how much.
We don’t think that this is too much to ask. When these charges were originally agreed, that’s what we were sold. Better for the planet, help make a difference. Not line the pockets of huge businesses that seem to be on our side, if you trust their literature, but then surreptitiously change the rules and profiteer from customers’ good nature.
As the author of this piece (Dani), I feel very strongly about sustainability and corporate greenwashing. Can you tell? I genuinely care about this subject, which is why I volunteered to write this blog, and why I’m proud to help my team write ESG courses for iAM.
After all, if supermarkets can hide behind vague sustainability claims, so can other businesses, from retailers to suppliers in your supply chain.
We approached businesses, and asked them which skills gaps they had, and, after discovering that not enough training about Environment, Sustainability and Governance (ESG) was available, and crucially, wanted. Thankfully, that aligned with our passion, so we made courses about it. Valuable topics such as Waste Management, Leading Ethical Decisions, The Problem with Plastic, and, yes, Corporate Social Responsibility. They’ve been designed with care and are designed to (obviously) be effective and drive a change in mindset. In this case, the knowledge gained can help you make ethical decisions that can help protect your brand.
Because they’re well researched and written by actual humans, they can explain complex subjects and technical terms in a way that anyone, even a passionate layman like me, can understand and then apply. And best of all, these (and hundreds of other useful topics) can be bought individually or as bundles straight from our website.
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