Why is it that once again it is the ordinary person on the street that is being targeted. I do not manufacture these bags so why should i have to pay because they are an environmental problem. I use Bags for Life whenever i can and if i don't have one with me i will only use a carrier bag if it is necessary. There, i have done my bit. Now i have a 'radical idea' ban manufactures from making bags that are not biodegradable. Simple! Stop targeting the 'little person' and target those who produce them. Don't charge me, charge them, they would soon change things. It's just bloody common sense, if they are an environmental problem, stop bloody making them.

I'd support it, sorry to miss the petition.
Bring it on :-)

"Now i have a 'radical idea' ban manufactures from making bags that are not biodegradable. Simple! Stop targeting the 'little person' and target those who produce them."

A great idea. Except the history of environmental pollution has been - 1. Businesses doing what they want.
2. governments wanting to legislate to stop certain practices
3. businesses accusing governments of interfering with the free market, driving up costs, destroying the economy and generally not knowing what they are on about because individuals and businesses know better than governments.

The rivers, ground and the air didn't get less polluted
because businesses developed better cleaner processes. They got that way because businesses developed better cleaner processes, and then governments forced them to use them, sometimes, eventually.

I'm not saying that governments get it right most of the time. I'm saying that even when they do get it right they end up fighting industry opposition, an industry that rarely cleans up it's own act without being pushed into it through govenment intervention.

Vehicles manufactured for sale in the US have some of the lowest fuel efficiency in the developed world. Why? Because U.S. fuel efficiency regulations are some of the lowest in the developed world.
This from the most advanced industrial economy in the world.

LCD manfuacturers have started using a cleaning chemical that is a significantly stronger greenhosue gas than chemicals they used previously that were put in the Kyoto treaty. This chemical was not put in at the time because it was virtually unused at the time the treaty was written. Whatever your belief on global warming what does this say about the attitude of industry? Our governments pass legislation on greenhouse gasses, but screw them we know better.

Years ago we had strong paper carrier bags with string handles that we reused over and over again. Everyone had shopping bags or baskets and the carriers were only bought (3d in old money - equal to about 1 1/2 pence in decimal) if you had extra or forgotten your shopping bag.

One big difference to then and now is that we did most of our shopping on a daily basis as we needed it. There were very few supermarkets. Now, instead of shopping locally we all go to the supermarkets once a week or so and do all the main shopping at once.

This is a downside of having supermarkets instead of local shops like we had in the 1960s.

Personally, I like these shopping bags that fold up. They're strong, hold a lot and the handles are more comfortable than plastic bags which cut into your hands.

I see in the story above this one another one of our immigrant friends busy 'enriching' our society.

And of course, in the rose tinted world of the PC obsessed Adver, nobody is ever allowed to criticise immigration.

I do find this argument about plastic bags somewhat amusing, and this is a personal not UKIP view. We are told by SBC that we have to put our waste in bin liners, to avoid the smell etc, and the risk to workers health. These bin liners are on average 5 to 7 times the size of carrier bags. Now if one household puts just 3 bin liners into their wheelie bin that is the equivalent of 15 to 21 carrier bags. Given the bin liners are made of a stronger plastic than carriers, one assumes they degrade at a far slower rate, if at all. Can no one else see the irony of this. If house hold waste was collected once a week, rather than once a fortnight, then there would be no need to put it in these bags as there would not be the level of decay, thus saving millions of carrier bag equivalent being put into landfill, or is that too logical.

Robert Feal-Martinez wrote:
I do find this argument about plastic bags somewhat amusing, and this is a personal not UKIP view. We are told by SBC that we have to put our waste in bin liners, to avoid the smell etc, and the risk to workers health. These bin liners are on average 5 to 7 times the size of carrier bags. Now if one household puts just 3 bin liners into their wheelie bin that is the equivalent of 15 to 21 carrier bags. Given the bin liners are made of a stronger plastic than carriers, one assumes they degrade at a far slower rate, if at all. Can no one else see the irony of this. If house hold waste was collected once a week, rather than once a fortnight, then there would be no need to put it in these bags as there would not be the level of decay, thus saving millions of carrier bag equivalent being put into landfill, or is that too logical.

Household waste is collected once a week.

I get recyclable waste taken away every week with the wheelie bin taken once a fortnight.

It's a system that works very well, for me at least, and it only falls down when people can't be bothered to read the literature telling them what to do and can't be bothered to sort their waste.

I use considerably fewer bin liners now because much less goes in the bin and much more gets recycled.

Sort it out RFM

What are the chances of the government using the revenue from this tax for environmental purposes? Or would it be diverted elsewhere - ie Iran, Afghanistan, national debt....etc etc

Casual I think it is you who needs to sort it out. Unless you live in a different town, household waste should be in the wheelie bin, thus being collected fortnightly, it is the recycled items that are collected once a week.

Recycled items being.. household waste that can be recycled.

Household waste, of some sort, is taken away every week.

Do you have a problem with that now?

Here we go again - yet another proposed tax by "environmentalists"

Perhaps they should realise that the public are rapidly coming to the conclusion that the phrase "protect the environment" actually means we have hoound another way to raise taxes and get you to agree to it.

Perhaps our envirnmentalists should tell the truth and admit that the bags, like car CO2 emissions are a tiny, tiny percentage of trhe total damage with 98% of pollution coming from natural causes.

Remember that politicians love the green movement as it is a glorified excuse to raise taxes and get you to pat them on the back for it.

Good excuse for even more stealth taxes Gordon....

Casual I think you know that household waste is that which cannot be re-cycled, as opposed to that which can be recycled. Ie food stuffs etc, and any plastic without the triangle on it.

What would be the problem if incinerators were built and the bags thrown in to them where they just melt to nothing and the contents of the bags burnt to a cinder? Problem solved.

johnboy, there would be those who claim it would affect the ozone layer.

no disrespect, but for some reson she looks like a 'Green Party' kind of person.....they can take their '10p' tax and shove it..........

A 10p tax on plastic bags will do virtually nothing for the environment.

The real problem througout the planet is overpopulation.

It's by far the biggest problem the environment faces yet no Western government will ever do anything about it because it's not politically correct to do so.

So, rather than address the real problems the planet faces they will continue to mess around with these ridiculous 'green taxes' and continue to attempt to make everyone feel as if they're not 'doing their bit'.

The whole thing is utterly farcical.

A beached whale in Mull was recently discovered to have 23 plastic bags in its stomach.

There you go, feed them to the whales, problem solved.

You could put the plastic bags in your pocket, because all the plastic bags that I put in my pocket bio-degrade really rapidly, as there all full of holes and falling apart.

Frontier spot on,i agree totally.

"I see in the story above this one another one of our immigrant friends busy 'enriching' our society"
And if they break the law feed 'em on plastic bags!

To be fair I use the 'bags for life' more often than you'd think.. I buy one everytime I go to Tescos... Easier to carry more and a snippet at 40p.... Bargain.
As for curbing over population... How would you do this Frontier?? chose who can and can't have children, limit families to 1 child? or possibly decide how long people live for? It is a fact that people are living longer, people that shouldn't be alive today have been granted life with new technologies. So unless you can personally suggest something on that subject Frontier, I'd keep quiet....

Neil,fair comment,perhapes if curtailed immigration it might be astep in the right direction.We might then be able to look after our ageing population.

Frontier(s) wrote:
A 10p tax on plastic bags will do virtually nothing for the environment. The real problem througout the planet is overpopulation. It's by far the biggest problem the environment faces yet no Western government will ever do anything about it because it's not politically correct to do so. So, rather than address the real problems the planet faces they will continue to mess around with these ridiculous 'green taxes' and continue to attempt to make everyone feel as if they're not 'doing their bit'. The whole thing is utterly farcical.

It's true that a plastic bag tax does not tackle the real problems but it does contribute to raising awareness of wider issues such as overpopulation, as you state. It's the same as recycling plastic bottles, it doesn't really help as the problem is more over-consumption than waste but nevertheless when a person recycles those bottles often they are led to think about how they could do without so many bottles in the first place.

Frontier(s) wrote:
A 10p tax on plastic bags will do virtually nothing for the environment. The real problem througout the planet is overpopulation. It's by far the biggest problem the environment faces yet no Western government will ever do anything about it because it's not politically correct to do so. So, rather than address the real problems the planet faces they will continue to mess around with these ridiculous 'green taxes' and continue to attempt to make everyone feel as if they're not 'doing their bit'. The whole thing is utterly farcical.

It's true that a plastic bag tax does not tackle the real problems but it does contribute to raising awareness of wider issues such as overpopulation, as you state. It's the same as recycling plastic bottles, it doesn't really help as the problem is more over-consumption than waste but nevertheless when a person recycles those bottles often they are led to think about how they could do without so many bottles in the first place.

Frontier(s) wrote:
A 10p tax on plastic bags will do virtually nothing for the environment. The real problem througout the planet is overpopulation. It's by far the biggest problem the environment faces yet no Western government will ever do anything about it because it's not politically correct to do so. So, rather than address the real problems the planet faces they will continue to mess around with these ridiculous 'green taxes' and continue to attempt to make everyone feel as if they're not 'doing their bit'. The whole thing is utterly farcical.

It's true that a plastic bag tax does not tackle the real problems but it does contribute to raising awareness of wider issues such as overpopulation, as you state.

It's the same as recycling plastic bottles, it doesn't really help as the problem is more over-consumption than waste but nevertheless when a person recycles those bottles often they are led to think about how they could do without so many bottles in the first place.

How silly, I apologise for the three posts. I hate it when people do that.

As for curbing over population... How would you do this Frontier?? chose who can and can't have children, limit families to 1 child? or possibly decide how long people live for? It is a fact that people are living longer, people that shouldn't be alive today have been granted life with new technologies. So unless you can personally suggest something on that subject Frontier, I'd keep quiet....

I expected a few knee-jerk reactions.

What's necessary is education and a gradual change in policy with regards to the Welfare State.

Education to inform people that the more children you have, the more damage you're doing to the environment.

It's strange how people whinge on about damage we're doing to the planet yet think it's their right to have as many children as they wish. It's totally hypocritical.

As the moment our government has embarked on a social engineering programme that effectively allows people who aren't best placed (for themselves or their children) to have children to go on and have as many as they wish. It may sound very old fashioned but a lot of the problems we're seeing in youngsters today stems from the fact that many don't know their fathers. Many have siblings with two or three different fathers, none of whom they ever see.

We can pretend all we like and we can all say how wonderfully modern it is for a single mother to have five kids by five different fathers but deep down even they, I suspect, would rather it wasn't that way. Report after report and research after research has shown that children benefit from both male and female parental role models.

Just because Labour have come along and decided that everyone should just do whatever the hell they want most certainly does NOT suddenly make doing anything you want 'OK'.

So, no need for the kind of melodramatic actions you quoted - just education, slow reform of the Welfare State and our cavalier attitudes to the well-being of our own children.

If we're remotely serious about saving the planet, it's the only way we're going to have any chance of doing it - although my own belief is that global warming and climate change will happen regardless of anything humans might do.

At least restricting overpopulation might reduce the pace of the process, if we're lucky.

As for curbing over population... How would you do this

Ban immigration.
Tax children, rather than giving them tax refunds.
Ban fertility treatment.
Death sentence for possession of class A drugs without a license/prescription
.
Death sentence for gun & knife crime.

I dare say that there's a few others, but this would be a start.