Our Carrier Bag

As most people in the UK will already be aware, from 5th October 2015 the UK Government introduced some new legislation. This was a call for large retailers to charge a minimum of 5p for single-use carrier bags. The reasoning behind the scheme was to minimise the use of these single-use carrier bags and their associated litter by encouraging people to re-use bags.
 
The Government expects the following benefits from the scheme - An overall benefit of over £780 million to the UK economy; Up to £730 million raised for good causes; £60 million savings in litter clean-up costs; and Carbon savings of £13 million.
 
Here at Planet Organic, our heritage is based on our core principles - Organic, Natural and Sustainable, so for us this new legislation was a blessing. And although we encourage our customers to reuse first and recycle second, we often get asked about the logic behind our own 10p bag charge, so wanted to include you, our valued customers, into our thought-process.
 

 

We originally charged 10p for our cornstarch carrier bags which although biodegradable, were still classed as plastic under current legislation. We changed to a paper bag in October and decided to retain the 10p charge because we want to deter the use of carrier bags altogether and encourage people to purchase our cotton carrier bag and reuse it: It’s multi-purpose and technically should be a bag for life…!

 

You can buy our organic cotton shopping bag here

Proceeds from the carrier bag charge contribute to the charitable donations we make within the locations of our stores. We hope you’ll agree that maintaining a 10p charge has the environment’s best interests at heart. 

from Planet Organic Blog http://ift.tt/1LgCnZv
via How to Save Money When Buying Organic Foods