Scotland will tax plastic bags

Published on October 27, 2005 By Rajiv Badlani In Business

I just read an article by Jeremy Watson in the Scotland News that the Scots will soon be charging a 10 cent tax on disposable plastic bags. Scotland uses about a billion bags a year totaling up to 6,500 tons of waste. Most are buried in landfill sites, where they can take hundreds of years to degrade, but many litter urban areas, the countryside and the sea, where they can become a major hazard for wildlife. The stomachs of whales and seabirds washed up on Scottish shores have been found to be filled with plastic bag fragments, which may have contributed to their deaths.

The sums raised will be collected from shops by local council officers and the profits spent on environmental projects. In Ireland, where a similar bill has reduced plastic bag usage by 95% since being introduced in 2002, the levy has already raised £23m, says Jeremy. Liberal Democrat MSP Mike Pringle, who introduced the bill, says that the Irish levy had been "a huge success", adding: "As well as reducing the number of plastic bags being thrown away, it has really increased awareness of recycling in general” Councils in Scotland are backing a levy as it would save them millions of pounds in landfill charges, as well as providing cash for new environmental programmes. Predictably, the British Plastics Federation, is carping about it, but Mike Pringle has the answer “Free plastic bags only became common in the 1970s. Before that our forebears managed very well without them." Reusable cloth bags are an attractive and affordable alternative, as can be seen at www.badlani.com/bags/ The guys who oppose the taxation bill should read some of the stories on this weblog, including the one which tells you how plastic chemicals leaching into your food from packaging and doing a gender bender on newborn babies.

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