IKEA UK Will Charge For Plastic Bags
by John Laumer, Philadelphia 
on 06. 6.06
We've just read that "IKEA is to become the UK's first major retailer to regularly charge customers for plastic bags,..." Add this news to the overall retail store green trend list: selling organic food and clothing, fashionable green interior designs, solar panels on roofs, buying carbon credits, installing wind mills in parking lots, and, now charging for disposable plastic bags. According to reports, "The Swedish firm will charge shoppers 5p for every bag with immediate effect, rising to 10p in September". The plan is to simultaneously switch to biodegradable bags and reduce the price of its iconic reusable “Big Blue Bag” (pictured here) to 25p. The anticipated result will be to cut total disposable bag use by 20 million.
"Ikea - which gave away 32 million bags in 2005 - said it had conducted a successful two-year charging trial in Edinburgh, which had led to a 90% drop in consumption....Ikea emphasized that it would not make any money from the move since all the proceeds would be donated to the environmental organisation "Community Forests"." (On cue: this is the part where Tree Huggers get excited.)
Whole Foods, Costco, and other retailers have already gotten with the program of selling logo covered re-useable shopping bags. Although Warren feels that material selection for some designs has been less than perfect and color competition a bit wild in the aisles, hopefully Wal-Mart will bring some focus by introducing a re-useable bag in organic fiber (hint, hint), pointing the arrow toward the right target! Then, we will be treated to some whining by the disposable plastic bag industry, which will cite widespread loss of jobs.
Via: BBC
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Nice move Ikea but they're not the first in the UK. Aldi and Lidl (supermarket chains) have charged for bags for years, albeit through thriftyness rather than green ethics.
Also noticed recently that Tesco have plastic bag recycling bins in their stores now into which you can drop any old or used carrier bags.
I love these bags! They're similar to tarp material and are tough as nails! I've used them for everything from carying dirt to laundry! Mine finally gave out after 3 years of use!
I was in Ireland this winter and they charge .10 cent for a bag everywhere. I'm under the impression it is a bag tax implimented by the gov't. I wish we'd have one here in the U.S.!
In Austria we pay 1Euro for each Ikea bag, and between 12 and 22 cents per paper/plastic bag in regular supermarkets..... so Englad should not brag about being so late in introducing such methods.
I lived in Switzerland about 9 years ago for a period over two years. They charged for bags in the grocery there; the people (even in the small village I lived in) were hip to using cloth bags. Seems like everyone was doing it. I hope one day retailers in Israel will adopt this policy. I am known in shops as "the girl who uses her own bag" like I am a weirdo or something!
I found that the big tarp ikea bags were a little big for grocery shopping. I started to buy nice bags but then decided to reuse all of the cheap plastic ones until they died. After a year, I find that I still have plenty of bags on hand just from going to other stores (Target, Sears), or when I forget bring my bags in. My next step is to remember the bags when I go into any store.
This is great news. I'm all for taxing plastic bag consumption. The waste is abhorrent but the main benefit is it makes responsible consumer behaviour unavoidable and the more it is made to seem "the norm" the more likely it is to become so.
I don't think the intention of the post was to brag about progress in the UK. Any british treehugger who has travelled acknowledges exactly how far behind the UK is in matters green, particularly recycling. It's just encouraging to see something been done about it!
This is SUCH an important topic - how do we get supermarkets in the U.S. to start charging for plastic bags. Should it be tackled state by state? Is there an organized lobby already? Please advise - I want to help. The oceans and beaches are turning into plastic - we must stop this addiction.
Ikea just introduced the plastic bag charge in the US effective 15/03/2007. Most supermarkets in California don't charge for bags, but if you bring in ones to re-use, they give you a 5 cent credit per bag.
San Francisco, the first American city to do so, has placed a ban on usage of plastic bags in supermarket and pharmecies. The city of Marin and Oakland are following suit and doing so. Although many European countries have made swifter progress in tackling the problem, California is making the first step to show the rest of the U.S to jump on the bandwagon.
Well, this isn't the first time I see this. I went to Sweden a couple of years ago and every supermarket had that system. You have to take your own bag unless you were willing to pay for your bags. Also if you would buy the plastic bags, they were made thicker than the normal plastic bags here. It would make it much easier to keep up reusing them. The US really needs to catch up on that. I've seen signs on some supermarkets here that they say for the cashier to use the least bags possible but sometimes you take three small things and they put each item in a seperate bag. Also when you tell them that you have your own bag they look at you like if you've grown three heads.