This makes me think that could be the case.
How often do you stop in the supermarket when you haven’t planned to? I know I do fairly often, especially on my way home from work. In that case I don’t have my reusable bags with me (I don’t use those horrible supermarket ones either, although I do have a nice Tesco one with a sheep on it, but that’s because its cute) and if there’s too much to fit in the small bag I take to work then I use the plastic bags.
Now imagine plastic bags are banned.
What am I to do? I will have to buy a bag (or two, or three) if I want to go shopping on the spur of the moment. Of course, supermarkets will love this, more money for them. These bags however surely use more resources to make? The impact on the environment to make one of these bags will be higher, the reduction in impact will come from the reuse.
So, not only would banning plastic bags result in greater expense to consumers (and be a government backed handout to supermarkets) it would also increase the environmental damage caused by those of us who reuse bags most of the time and the impact of anyone who doesn’t care about paying the extra charge each time they go shopping.
Add in the fact that plastic bags make great bin liners which would otherwise have to be made and then bought, banning plastic bags could increase environmental impact (as well as the impact on our pockets).
