British supermarkets pledged in 2006 that they would try and cut the number of plastic bags being given out by 25 percent by spring 2009. Incredibly, the campaign to reduce the reliance on plastic bags has seen the target smashed by nearly halving the amount of plastic bags being given out.

In May 2009, the big six supermarkets gave out 452 million plastic bags. This figure compares to May 2006 where 870 million plastic bags were used. This means that the number of plastic bags given out has been reduced by 48 percent.  Read more... (228 words, estimated 55 secs reading time)

A survey has shown that online supermarkets tend to use too many plastic bags when delivering goods.

Which? researchers ordered 29 items from the five top online supermarkets – Asda, Ocado, Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Waitrosedeliver – and compared the usage of plastic bags in each online order.

The researchers found that some supermarkets were packing a single product such as mince, Fairy Liquid or a multi-pack of crisps into a single plastic bag, when multiple products in the same order could have easily been put into the same plastic bag. In particular, the researchers criticized Tesco and Sainsbury’s as they both used a much larger number of plastic bags than any of the other supermarkets. Tesco and Sainsbury’s both used 14 bags to pack the 29 items; Waitrose used 7, Ocado 10 and Asda 9.  Read more... (163 words, estimated 39 secs reading time)